How can I reference an element from another tool?

[kents]

I want to define requirements in EA, but I need to be able to refer to a specific requirement from another tool (such as TestLink). I know there is an auto-numbering feature in EA, but it just inserts the auto-numbering text before the element name. Since the element name is editable, it could change. Is there a better way to do this?

Of course, ideally, I'd like to be able to navigate directly with a single click from a link in the other tool to the referenced element in EA (e.g. in the project browser). But even something fairly clunky (e.g involving cutting and pasting) would be better than nothing.

[qwerty]

Each element has a GUID (you can copy that via context menu Copy/GUID) in the browser. Now it's easy to write a little script that accepts this GUID and reveals the element in the browser (or even in all diagrams where it's used).

q.

[Sunshine]

I use the alias field to store Requirement numbers so you could you that. Not sure what TestLink is and couldn't find a safe reference on the web - kept getting "warning attack page" so stopped looking.
If you can access TestLink via web URL you can use the file links using web address on each requirement.

[Geert Bellekens]

There's a tool out there to do just that:http://sourceforge.net/projects/eaprotocol/ that does this, but it looks like it has been abandoned for a few years now.

But it is open source, so you might be able to use it anyhow.

Otherwise it would indeed be quite simple to write something like that yourself.

You would use the code of the EA Navigator as a basis, see https://github.com/GeertBellekens/Enterprise-Architect-Toolpack/

Geert

[kents]

Thank you all for your answers.