Project root, Permission and Version Control

[tdu]

First of all, EA is really a great product. I love it.

I wish someone can help me to make clear about the following questions:

I'm using EA corporate edition, SQL 2000 as the backend. CVS SCC proxy as the gate to CVS.

1. Project root conception. I created one database in SQL 2000 for EA. I wish to put all my projects in it and use multiple project roots to hold uml diagrams for each project. Is that the right usage for project root? Why I can't remove the first project root? Is it special?

If I could treat the project root as the management point of different project, there may have some limitations in security and version control:

2. You can't set different permission based on different project root. The user permission is always global.

3. You can check in by package or by views. If the point that you enable the version contains multiple packages, you have to manage them together (check in and check out), because it controls the version based on XML import and export. So for a large project with multiple levels packages, if you want detail version control, you need to setup export files for each package. But the version control directory is a global setting; you have to put all these xml files into one directory. I don't think it is the right way to do that. On the other hand, if you set the version control on top level views (you still need lots of xml files in the same directory, if you have multiple project roots), even you make a small change on one of the child diagram, you will update the whole collection. It is quite slow for large collection.

When I first use the EA, I thought the file based access is different with the DBMS based access. Each file will be only for one project that has different views similar as the base template provided by EA. And the DBMS backend will provide a central repository for all the projects. One database will be able to contain multiple EA file. I realize now the DBMS backend has the same level as the file based.

I wish I can get some suggestions from you guys how to use EA for multiple projects, how to manage the security and version control for it.

Thanks.

Tong Du

[thomaskilian]

tdu,
here my opinions to your questions:
1. The meaning of the project root is more to provide different view on a single project (management, development, etc.) than to hold multiple projects. You can/should place different projects in different databases. However, you are free to use different roots though.

2. Permissions are global for one project. If you use different databases you can set different rights.

3. For my purpose I'm only working in small projects and I'm using manual version control (speek: backup). So I can't give much of support here. Maybe you should search this forum for XML and/or "version control" since both have been discussed a lot.

Probabla your last chapter states what I sayed above  

[tdu]

Hi thomaskilian,

Thank you for your reply.

I got reply from EA support too. You are right. The current EA file or database is based upon the concept of one repository per project. The good news is they are considering to accommodate multiple projects within one repository. It maybe available early next year. (I wish it is proper to quote the information from their support).