ReUse of projects while keeping traceability

[shirleyjh]

Hi all,
I need to create an EA environment that will use a repository.
Now the thing is that many projects will be saved on the repository, and in the future each of them could be reused for another project.
As a project is reused, it should also maintain traceability to the reused projects.
So as a complete solution, i wish share with all users the full list of the projects i already have and allow them a reuse of projects and automatically create a traceability to the original project.
Anyone has an idea on how to implement such a solution in EA with its standard capabilities, or should i create a feature of my own that will allow this.
Thanks in advance to whoever helps.
Shirley.

[Geert Bellekens]

Shirley,

You can add multiple models in a single repository, so that is no issue.
But what do you mean by "reuse" a project? What does that mean?

Geert

[shirleyjh]

Hi,
By reuse i mean taking a full model, copying parts of it(full packages with their elements) into another model and tracing the original model elements (like a classifier) from the the first model.
Hope its more clear..

[Geert Bellekens]

I don't get it. Why would you want to create a copy of a package?
I think that is never a good idea to copy/paste/modify. You'll end up with a whole bunch of "almost the same but not quite" packages...

But if you really wanted to do that you could copy a whole package in a model using standard functionalities.
The traceability is something you would then need to add manually (or via some kind of automation)

Geert

[qwerty]

You can not really trace into non-loaded models. There is no such "external reference". What you could do is to introduce some kind of tagging mechanism. But in general the traceability is established by the GUIDs of all elements. References are stored using these GUIDs but if you model does not have the trace end you will not be able to see it. However, if you reload the missing part you will be able to reconstruct the trace.

There is obviously no general answer to your question.

q.

[Robert Sheridan]

I agree with the above: whatever you do do not reuse by copying as if you do you will lose the ability to determine the impact of a change to an element that has been reused.

It also depends on how reuse is going to be implemented: will updates to a reused element be expected to be implemented in all systems that use it?  If you work through your method it may become easier to decide what to do.

A possible workaround is to baseline or do an XMI export when a element that is reused is changed so that you have the previous version stored.  You could also use a tag or a note in models that reuse elements to record which version of an element has been used.

[shirleyjh]

Hi all,
thanks for all your replies.
I tried using an add-in named ARCSeeker which enables reuse of full packages (but no traceability ).
Anyone had experience with that?

[Takeshi K]

Hi,

When you store Package to ARCSeeker storage or get from storage, ARCSeeker automatically records trace information.

For example, if you store a Pacakge from A.EAP and put it into B.EAP, you can see traceability like:

A.EAP -> Pacakge <- B.EAP
(ARCSeeker automatically creates A.EAP and B.EAP components to record traceability.)

Related Infomation:
http://www.arcseeker.com/products/eaconnector2.htm


If you have not tried latest ARCSeeker, please try again with the latest.