Using EA to outsource PHP work?

[yorweb]

Hi

I have been a user of EA since around 2005 (I think) but used it only for designing the odd database schema and nothing else. I know there are a lot of tools out there for this but when I tried the trial copy of EA, I really liked it so bought Version 6.1 Professional.

Anyhow I have now decided to outsource some of my PHP5 coding work and it dawned on me that EA would be a good tool for this. My idea is that I can model my requirements and the outsourcing team build to the spec accordingly.

I have a few questions:
- Is there any extra PHP functionality in the latest version of EA over Version 6.1 which I have currently have installed?
- Does anyone on here work with Indian (or ones of any nationality) outsourcers and use EA to communicate their ideas and requirements?
- Is there any pdf documentation on using Enterprise Architect to build models etc?
- Are there any training exercises demonstrating how to use EA effectively to develop web applications available, especially PHP5 based projects?

So far I worked with just one outsourcing team based in Nepal for a very small project to get a flavour of what is involved. If it turns out to be a disaster then it's only cost me $300 and I'll look on it as a learning curve.  

Any thoughts, comments, suggestions aswell as answers to my questions would be gratefully received. I think what I should be looking to do is get myself on a EA Training Workshop, they don't come cheap but hopefully will be worth the investment.

Cheers

Tim

[thomaskilian]

Hi,
I can't really answer one of your questions. But I use EA to develop my PHP sources. In general it works very well. But there are also some hurdles to take. One of the big problems I found was that PHP's include mechanism is awful. So you can not include files relative to a path (at least I could not figure out how). Thus I had to have to places for my PHP sources: a main path (seen by the user) and a shadow path for the includes. That makes modeling sometimes a pain. Else it's working really fine.

Also I have to tell that I spent quite some time to adopt the code generation to my needs (which seemed necessary as PHP is not necessarily OO in some respect). So these tweaks need some time to be in shape. Now I have a rather stable framework for MDA that can create code from a mere domain model with a few steps. It's something very special I developed in my spare time. I haven't found the time to put this on the Wiki and unfortunately I will not be able to do so in the very next future...

However, I think you should give it a try. This board will at least give you a great help if you got stuck at some place.