Disappearing Use Case (bug?)

[liquidray]

Hi There
I searched the board and I cant find a trace of this issue so here it goes.

I am working on a project using EA and our EAP file contains over 800 external requirements, 400 use cases and any more entities and classes.

After not working on a package for over a month I returned to that package to find 1 use case (lets call it UseCase007) missing from the document tree.  I searched for UseCase007 via the search function and the search found the use case. However when I double click on the use case the app tells me that it cannot find it in the browser.

One of our programmers accessed the data programmatically an d found that the use case has a negative package ID.

My questions are:
How did it get a negative package ID?
How can we tell if more elements have the negative package ID?
What can cause the element to get a negative package ID assigned?
Is there a size limit to an EAP file? Have we hit it, and having hit it what kind of side-effects can we expect?

I have a lot more requirements and use cases to enter into the model but I am concerned about loosing hours of work.
Any help is appreciated.
Thank you!

[Eve]

EAP files are essentially access databases and can grow quite large, you'll see performance problems first and you'll get errors if the file goes over 2GB.  I still wouldn't expect data loss if that happened though.  In most cases you'll want to upsize to a DBMS before reaching the limits.

Negative numbers themselves are not a problem, databases often wrap auto numbers when they reach the limit of the type.

A project integrity check (in Tools | Data Management) should fix the problem for you.

[liquidray]

It would seem to be that the negative number is a problem because I can no longer see the use case in the project tree - I can only access it from search. That is a huge problem for me because I need to work with the use case and include it in other diagrams and reports.
Also this makes me very concerned because if it is possible for other elements to disappear due to database rolling over counters it would seem that the longer I use EA the more I am likely to have elements I can no longer access.

I also have a question:
What do you mean by "upsize to a dbms"?

Thank you.

[«Midnight»]

What do you mean by "upsize to a dbms"?

If you have the corporate edition you can store your models in a database such as Oracle, SQL Server, or MySQL to name a few.

You have to create the target database using the scripts provided on the Sparx Resources page, then copy your your project over using the Tool | Data Management | Project Transfer fuction.

HTH, David

[Eve]

The negative number shouldn't be a problem in itself.  As I was saying a negative number could be a valid package ID.  If it isn't (or if the package it corresponds to corresponds to a root node) then you won't be getting the use case appearing in the project browser.  In either case running the integrity check should fix the problem.

[duzar]

I have the same problem. Some objects have negative id's, and these objects don't appear in project. Problems have started after transfering project from EAP to MS SQL Server. Running integrity check didn't fix it.