Best language for scripting EA

[ocroquette]

I am considering the possible languages to use the automation interface of EA.

So far, it appears I have the following possibilities:

• Visual Basic: Pro: standard Con: Messy (personal opinion )
  
• C#: Pro: standard, scalable Con: ?
  
• Python: Pro: easy, good scripting language Con: non standard under Windows, not supported by Sparx I guess
  
• Java: Pro: supported by EA, widely known Con: interface in beta version only
  

So my questions are:

• Which language are you using for serious automation of EA?
  
• Which one would you recommend when starting from scratch?
  

Thanks!

[«Midnight»]

VB.Net (vs. VB) same as C# for EA purposes.

[Paolo F Cantoni]

VB.Net (vs. VB) same as C# for EA purposes.

C# (vs. C++) same as VB.Net for EA purposes...  

Paolo

[thomaskilian]

I use Perl for historical reasons. But I would prefer python over it. And several people do use it as I know from several threads.

[ocroquette]

Thanks for your opinions!

I searched a bit based on that, and most people seems to think that choosing between C# and VB.Net is a matter of taste .

However, many seem to complain about the lack of optional parameters support in C#, particularly when using COM interfaces making use of them.

Is that the case with the EA interface?

[Paolo F Cantoni]

Thanks for your opinions!

I searched a bit based on that, and most people seems to think that choosing between C# and VB.Net is a matter of taste .

However, many seem to complain about the lack of optional parameters support in C#, particularly when using COM interfaces making use of them.

Is that the case with the EA interface?

I believe there is support for variable parameters in C# it's just a special type of parameter and must be placed last (but I don't have the IDE open at present to search help)

Paolo

[«Midnight»]

You might be able to get away with passing Type.Missing to an optional parameter for which you have no data. Depending on the nature of the COM server, this has been known to work.

[ufechner]

What's wrong with Python?
I use it successfully, it is easy to use.
I posted some examples in the EA wiki.

Regards:

Uwe Fechner

[«Midnight»]

There's nothing wrong with Python, as the examples demonstrate.

Thanks Uwe.

[ocroquette]

Although I like Python very much, there is something wrong with it in this context.

The reason is actually stated in the first post: it's not a standard Windows technology.

You need 2 third-party software pieces to run any script.

I see at least 2 major issues:

• Support: EA won't provide any support or workaround in case of bugs in the 3rd party software
  
• Deployment of Python+the Win32 interface
  

[ufechner]

Well, if you want to choose the best language, you have to know for which purpose.
I develop python scripts for the automation of EA for inhouse use only, so the deployment is no problem.

And support is no problem for me either:

You wont't get support for C# or .net from sparx, and you won't get support for python.
I did need support from sparx twice, one time there was a bug in EA with huge UseCase diagrams, and once a missing COM interface method.

If you have a problem with python, ask in the appropriate python forum and you will get a quick answer.

In our company we use delphi (for GUI applications), python (for inhouse non-GUI applications) and C (for embedded development), and we want to avoid to use more languages.

Developing software in python is very efficient and easy to validate, so you get high quality results quickly.

I hope to publish some more add-ons for EA, written in python in the future (in the moment I write a converter, that generates LaTex code from classes and requirements).

Regards:

Uwe Fechner
embedded development

[Jeff Odell]

Coming from the Microsoft development environment, I've had pretty good success using C#.  I originally created NAnt tasks, now MSBuild tasks, for things like producing HTML web sites, reports, exporting, etc.  That allowed me to add producing output from EA into nightly builds, etc.

I've also used C# to produce a couple add-ins without a problem.

I'm interested in creating Powershell cmdlets to make it easy to script EA features.