Enterprise Architect 11 Beta 1 (1101.4) - Released

[Geert Bellekens]

Anyone know what has been changed since the previous beta release (11.0.1100) ?

Geert

[Eve]

It was intended to clean up a few loose ends prior to the mail-out to our customer list.

Only minor updates to existing features to allow a better representation of our goals. Updated report templates (and the ability to use a diagram theme for reports) and handling of sub-packages in specification view.

[Geert Bellekens]

Ok, thanks for the info Simon.

Geert

[qwerty]

Anything found which made you jump for joy?

q.

[Geert Bellekens]

Not exactly Jump for Joy, but the ability to store any document in EA is a nice one.
Other then that I don't really see any major improvements in the areas of EA we use most.

Geert

[qwerty]

How easy my expectations are met....

But when Quinn the Eskimo gets here everybody's gonna jump for joy

q.

[rothnic]

Specification Manager
The specification manager has some promise, but I'd really like to see indentation in the list view correspond to containment relationships. In the list view, I didn't see how you could reorganize things as needed. If you want to, you'd need to use the package manager, then understand the containment relationships don't really mean anything. Adding drag and drop seems pretty critical to making this usable for "key stakeholders and business users".
Also would be better to show the elements that the requirement is associated to in the custom columns, instead of showing the relationship. You can double click and see the related elements. However, it would be more intuitive to see the "derived" requirements listed out to the right of a requirement than the arrow.

Dashboard
The charts and dashboards is pretty neat concept. I played around with building something similar using javascript and D3.js.

Doc Generation
DOCX is a nice to have. Still think many tools have a ways to go to making document generation usable for more than engineers, and those that understand scripting.

Relationship Matrix
Would have liked to see more work on the relationship matrix. They aren't treated like diagrams, so you can't create a diagram frame for them. They can sometimes require complicated SQL queries to show what you want and not show what you don't want to. This would also be a limitation of the modelview component for the dashboard as well. Need a way to easily select one or more packages, one or more stereotypes, and add/remove elements as needed for one-off filtering.

Open Issues
Critical usability issues for me that still exist are:
no way to line up ports
no way to mass change line types (or set default line type to orthogonal/tree) It blows my mind that this wasn't added
laggy large diagrams
non resizable diagram frames
connectors in IBDs being tied to a diagram instead of the model elements
visual diff (x,y coordinates aren't very useful for the type of people who want this information)

SysML specific issues that still exist:
no typing of connectors
property multiplicity not shown on block
no way to show allocate/refine on elements
no way to show Activity BDD format

Overall, I agree that the things that bug me on a day to day basis weren't touched. Seems more focused on nice-to-haves that aren't fully baked as is.

[motivatedgorilla]

Not exactly Jump for Joy, but the ability to store any document in EA is a nice one.
Other then that I don't really see any major improvements in the areas of EA we use most.

Geert

What do you mean by "ability to store any document in EA is a nice one"

Secondly, where can i download the beta from?

[qwerty]

Click on Forum left of Discussion on top, then Latest News.

q.

[Eve]

Rothnic,

I can't comment much at the moment, but I want to give you what I can.

no way to line up ports

Lining ports on different objects up to each other?

non resizable diagram frames

Are you talking about the non-selectable ones created for IBD? Right click near the border and you can set it as selectable.

connectors in IBDs being tied to a diagram instead of the model elements

The only connectors tied to a diagram are sequence and communication messages.

visual diff (x,y coordinates aren't very useful for the type of people who want this information)

That's been around for a while. You can access it from the diagram comparison from memory but it's also available in the context menu of a diagram in the project browser.

[Geert Bellekens]

Not exactly Jump for Joy, but the ability to store any document in EA is a nice one.
Other then that I don't really see any major improvements in the areas of EA we use most.

Geert

What do you mean by "ability to store any document in EA is a nice one"

Secondly, where can i download the beta from?

In v11 you can drag 'n drop any document onto a diagram. Then you can choose to actually store the document in the model. It also allows modifying the document and saving it directly in the model.
For me it means I'll have to use sharepoint a lot less, which is always a good thing.

Geert

[rothnic]

Rothnic,

I can't comment much at the moment, but I want to give you what I can.

Lining up ports, destributing them, etc. Basically treat them just like any other element on the diagram, except they are confined to the edge of an element. If you have two part properties on an IBD, both with ports, and a connector. You would want to select each port and the connector at the same time, then align centers. So the connector and ports would be centered.

Non-resizeable diagram frames. I mean when you drag and drop a diagram from the project browser onto a diagram and select "Diagram Frame". For example, if you wanted to have an overview diagram that has large thumbnails of each diagram instead of just a link.

Connectors tied to IBDs. This one I put into a couple long posts with examples and verified 3 other similar modeling tools that do not behave this way. I think it is because this is more a UML focused tool. With SysML, you may design System, with Subsystem 1 and Subsystem 2. If you created an IBD for Subsystem 1, you would use the connectors between the part properties/ports. If I included Subsystem 1 in a special context called "Subsystem 1 Testing Environment", then showed the structural elements of Subsystem 1 within the Testing Environment IBD the connectors would not exist in that context. With SysML, if you wanted to change the internal connections, you would define a specialized version of Subsystem 1 (Subsystem 1 for Testing) and define the alternative connectivity.
http://www.sparxsystems.com/cgi-bin/yabb/YaBB.cgi?num=1374248326 A sample model file and screenshots
http://www.sparxsystems.com/cgi-bin/yabb/YaBB.cgi?num=1382661152/2#2 A follow up, but still don't think this is understood.

Visual Diff: Wow, thanks. Somehow missed this. Scoured the baseline compare of a package looking for something related to "diagram". The toolbar, compare options, right click menu just say compare to baseline. Seems like more intuitive behavior might be to show the full visual diff by default when double clicking on a diagram icon, below or above the diagram properties. Then allow to deselect as needed. Now I need to look into whether I can script exporting these diff diagrams out....

[motivatedgorilla]

Not exactly Jump for Joy, but the ability to store any document in EA is a nice one.
Other then that I don't really see any major improvements in the areas of EA we use most.

Geert

What do you mean by "ability to store any document in EA is a nice one"

Secondly, where can i download the beta from?

In v11 you can drag 'n drop any document onto a diagram. Then you can choose to actually store the document in the model. It also allows modifying the document and saving it directly in the model.
For me it means I'll have to use sharepoint a lot less, which is always a good thing.

Geert

Does that also mean we can search within those documents?

[qwerty]

I would guess: no. Just a guess, but likely correct :-/

Reason: searches are SQL based and the document is in zipped format in a column. You can not search that way.

q.

[Eve]

I'd really like to see indentation in the list view correspond to containment relationships.

Containment relationships aren't recommended for modelling. They don't exist as a relationship type in UML 2 and they only exist in EA for backwards compatibility reasons.

it would be more intuitive to see the "derived" requirements listed out to the right of a requirement than the arrow

The view is intended to provide a document like view, while listing all derived requirements inline may be intuitive to you, for many people it would interupt the document flow.

Still think many tools have a ways to go to making document generation usable for more than engineers, and those that understand scripting.

Have you tried the document generation in v11? In many circumstances you should be able to achieve an attactive report without modifying any templates except for a cover page.

Lining up ports, destributing them, etc. Basically treat them just like any other element on the diagram, except they are confined to the edge of an element. If you have two part properties on an IBD, both with ports, and a connector. You would want to select each port and the connector at the same time, then align centers. So the connector and ports would be centered.

Okay, more or less what I thought. The problem is that in general the alignment and space evenly commands will have the movement blocked. I guess in general each command is going to move things in one dimension and the commands could be enabled if that dimension matches the edge they are on.

Non-resizeable diagram frames. I mean when you drag and drop a diagram from the project browser onto a diagram and select "Diagram Frame". For example, if you wanted to have an overview diagram that has large thumbnails of each diagram instead of just a link.

Scaling of embedded diagrams isn't unreasonable, although I think there's some reason why we haven't done it.

connectors in IBDs being tied to a diagram instead of the model elements

Now that you've linked to your other questions I can say that your problem is that EA doesn't display connectors between two elements that are not directly related on a diagram. The relationship still exists between elements.