Base Project

[charrington]

The manual says "To create a new Enterprise Architect project, you must select a project template that will form the base model for the new project". But nowhere does it explain what a base project is. And if 'you must ...' then why is there an option to create a new project? This doesn't make any sense.

[thomaskilian]

The reason is that there is no unique base project. This is always defined by you, depending on what kind of task you have to fulfill. You can start with a complete empty project and fill it on demand or you can select several predefined templates. You even can (like I do it) create a template project with predefined structures and create a new one starting from there. So you are right: as EA permits great flexibility here, you are also free to create nonsense.

[«Midnight»]

Actually Thomas, recent versions of EA provide an EABase project. EA uses this as it's (sort of) internal baseline when creating a new project.

I don't know how (or even if) the new project templates are stores there. However, if you edit EABase to change settings like default code generation language, the new settings will be the default for new projects.

The above is only true for projects created the new way, not copied like us old-timers do.

David

[charrington]

Ok, so the long and short of it is what? Should I do what the manual says I have to do (start with a base project)? Or is creating a new project doing exactly the same thing under the hood?

[thomaskilian]

My advice was mor or less: give both variants a try and take what fits best to you. There is no wrong or right...

[«Midnight»]

Thomas is quite correct. You have to think about what will work best for you, and consider each new project individually.

I have edited EABase (after making a backup copy) to use my preferred defaults. This lets me use the new project button in EA - I usually don't include any of the templates - and get a basic project shell.

One thing I did was clear out the glossary and such, so that resulting new projects were empty (or at least emptier).

However, if I need a really empty project shell, or one with some different customization, I start by copying an empty 'reference' project.

HTH, David

[charrington]

Thanks all for the hints. One question: how does this play out if you use SQL Server as you repository instead of Access files?

[«Midnight»]

Basically you need to add a few steps.

If you use SQL Server (or any of the DBMS repositories) you need to set up an empty schema before you can load a model. Depending on your configuration this could be through a corporate procedure - working with your friendly local DBA - or something you do yourself (perhaps through SQL Server Express). This involves running the scripts provided by Sparx to 'bootstrap' the schema so it can accept a model.

Having done this, you need to transfer a model into the DBMS, using the facilities EA provides for you. This could be a newly-created model as we've discussed above.

Now for the interesting part. You can create a few bare-bones models, one for each of your typical starting configurations. Load each of these into its own DBMS database. Now you can copy these - via some means you will develop yourself, and which is specific to your DBMS - each time you start a new model. The result is a predictable base project without having to go through all the preliminary steps.

HTH, David

[charrington]

Thanks David