Variations in Consistency

[JohnWSaundersIII]

Dear Sparx,

You know, it's nice that you have responsibilities in elements as well as external responsibilities which are separate elements. It's nice that one can make a responsibility in an element into an external responsibility. That creates a nice <<trace>> link between the two.

But, it would also be nice if the inverse operation worked - take an element <<trace>>'d to an external responsibility, and allow the responsibility to be made internal again. Symmetry is nice.

Consistency would be nice, too. You have external Issues, and there are element issues, yet there is no way to make an issue External, nor vice-versa. Same thing with Changes.

Worse, you have element defects and tasks, but no external versions of them!

Surely it must be easier to be consistent? It would certainly be easier for me!  

John

[Paolo F Cantoni]

John,

I know you've been on the forum for a while, so you'll know I'm Mr Consistency, Consistency, Consistency! ^TM  

However, in Sparx's defence, it is a bit harder to go in the reverse direction.

The item to be internalized needs to be related ONLY to the element you wish to internalize into.  That is, the relationship must be one-to-one ONLY.  If this is not the case, then the user needs to be notified and the internalization aborted.

I agree that once this condition is met, then the transformation should be straight forward - except that there is more metadata in the external item than the internalised form.  You'll lose information in the process.

My own view, should Sparx ever enquire, is that the notion of internal versus external is spurious in the first place.  What the modeller is interested in is:  Does this Element have any unique (that is, one-to-one) items (Issues, Responsibilities, Requirements etc)? Does it share items with other Elements?

Regardz
Paolo

BTW: I've recently come up with a new aphorism...
The function of any inforamtion system (including EA) is to:
Manage Complexity,
       Reduce Ambiguity,
               Eliminate Inconsistency! ^TM