Relationship Management

[elijahbaley]

Is there an easy way to do the following, instead of creating new links?

What we have is like the following:

(<-- : dependency)

Features <-- Module (requirement) <-- Sub Module (requirement) <-- Function (requirement)

This works fine, but we also would like to hide the modules and see the Feat <-- Function relationship directly.

Thanks!

[Geert Bellekens]

I don't think there is an easy way.
A difficult way could be to write an adding specifically for that.

Geert

[Luis J. Lobo]

The only way to view this is throught "Hierachy" window opened to 4 levels.

I don't think via add-in you can see a direct relation between first ant fourth elment: If you want that EA "draw" a relation in a diagram, this relation should exist DIRECTLY.

[Paolo F Cantoni]

Hi Elijah,

What you are after is the ability of EA to distinguish between canonical and derived relationships.  EA, unfortunately, doesn't currently have this ability.

I wish it did (for about 5 years).

However, in Sparx's defence it's not a trivial issue (nor is it rocket science).  You need to have the ability to work out which relationships are derivable and which (of those) should be persisted for the required semantics of the domain.

Given EA's current (and in the foreseeable future - and possibly by the nature of the problem) you WILL need to create additional relationships.  Geert is correct in saying that you will need to develop some automation if you want this to be managed in some way.

As it happens, I was discussing this very issue with colleagues this week.  I was going to post a topic on the subject shortly - investigating how one might go about this in a rational fashion.  We have developed an add-in that attempts to calculate such derived relationships.

HTH,
Paolo