EA Web server

[Juan Ignacio Garzon]

Hi,

We are analyzing adopting EA in our company.

One of our questions, is if there is a way to access some diagram (stored on a central EA database) from a Web application. We are looking for some server that given a digram's name, is able to  connect to EA's database, generate a static image of that diagram and deliver it to the user that is requesting. The user, in this case, wouldn't have a local installation of EA. That would be great in order to share a Diagram with people within our company that are'nt EA users and do not have the product locally installed.

Any help would be appreciated.
Thanks in advance,
Juan Ignacio

Pan American Energy
Argentina

[qwerty]

You could export the repository regularly via automation in HTML format. There are a couple of threads on how to do that. Of course you could do this more sophisticated on demand, but that kind of logic would need some implementation effort on your side (have some server listening to requests and create the according diagram(s)).

q.

[sjchatwin]

The "HTML report" does a nice job of creating a usable diagram.

However:
1. the HTML report is best hosted from a WebServer (IIS, or other) to avoid problems with the browser type (Chrome particularly)

2. The URL for the specific page or diagram is not stable and when a new HTML report is published it may change.  In practice I've found that small model changes keep the name stable, large re-organizations of the model give unstable URLs.

It may be usable depending on your precise needs and how dynamic your model is.

For more stable URLs I have exported .png images of the diagram and posted those in Confluence or similar Wiki tool.  This is a maintenance headache when diagrams change as the image has to be re-made and re-posted.

[AndyJ]

Hmm... I have not had this problem you describe with URL instability.

Is it because you move content around in the browser?

We publish our model via the html report and embed links into confluence to give users direct access to specific content.

The links to the content include the GUID of the diagram, and this does not change.

[Juan Ignacio Garzon]

You could export the repository regularly via automation in HTML format. There are a couple of threads on how to do that. Of course you could do this more sophisticated on demand, but that kind of logic would need some implementation effort on your side (have some server listening to requests and create the according diagram(s)).

q.

Thanks a lot for your response. I've read the automation interface documentation and I think it will fullfill our needs, as it provides a way to open a diagram directly from the database (as far as i've read).

Thanks

[Dermot]

as it provides a way to open a diagram directly from the database (as far as i've read)

The HTML generation does provide a copy of the data from the database, but not a direct link. If this is required - an alternative is to use EA Lite (free) and the Cloud service. This will provide real-time off-site read-only access to the source model (along with the ability to lodge comments via the Team-review forum).

[skiwi]

See also the cloud services application (SparxCloud, more)

[Juan Ignacio Garzon]

See also the cloud services application (SparxCloud, more)

Thanks!

Does a cloud server provide a way to access some diagrams without EA locally installed? I want the ability to share a diagram quickly by passing a link to someone.
Regards!

[qwerty]

I can't answer the cloud question, but in the past I had a little add-in that looked for a guid in the paste board and located the related element/diagram/package. You can get the appropriate guid into the paste board from the context menu in the project browser. This guid can the be sent via mail or any other message system.

Also you could look into EA's build-in group discussion where you can insert element links more easily. However, I never got anyone to using that as people tend to stick to the messaging systems they are used to which is (for the ones feeling the pain) Mickeysoft Outlook or for the very tough ones Lotus Notes

q.

[pmason]

AndyJ, could go into a little more detail on how you are linking your wiki to the model html report?

Like others have said, I would really like to be able to deep link to specific diagarms within a model html report but the generated report is always changing the ID for the given diagram. I also checked the image itself and they are different names.

Yes within the html report I can add URL's attached to elements and that works, so outbound from a model html report works but don't see a solution for the other way around.

[AndyJ]

No dramas.

The URLs look like this:

http://...URL of model... /html/index.htm?guid=6146BA1B-DA04-40ee-ACE0-2718641A992E

This method dives directly into the subject diagram (by GUID) and displays that diagram in the right-hand pane, and the Navigation tree from the model in the left-hand pane.

You can find these specific URLs by drilling down in your published model, or by selecting the GUIDs from your diagrams within EA.

(Navigate to the diagram in the Project Browser, Right-click on the diagram name and select: Copy Reference, then copy node GUID to clipboard.)

This gives you the GUID in the form:
{6146BA1B-DA04-40ee-ACE0-2718641A992E}

All you have to do is drop the curly brackets and you have the variable part of your URL.

I don't know what circumstances could cause the GUID of a diagram to change.

Andy