Filtering on Tags? Alternatives?

[mmo]

We recently had some discussions and decisions in our project to make certain features "future extensions" and delay them for now (maybe indefinitely...). This brought up the question re. filtering diagrams in EA:

In short: I want to mark certain elements (in class diagrams, in sequence diagrams, etc.) and display them only when a special filter is selected. As it seems EA doesn't properly support this scenario - hopefully you can prove me wrong - and thus my questions:

• Why can I not filter on tags? Since this variant is neither a version nor a phase (it's actually more like a branch) I don't want to abuse any of these predefined fields for this purpose.
• For the time being I thus abused the keywords field to contain a special tag, but that brought up another shortcoming: I want to filter things away by default and only show them when a special filter is ENabled, so the option "does NOT contain" for filters is missing!
• Can one make a specific filter the default for all diagrams? Or can one modify the default view to use a specific filter by default? I found neither option in EA.

Regards,
Michael

[qwerty]

IIRC others also wanted filtering by tags. Try to find the discussion and send in a feature request.

q.

[skiwi]

That might be
Stop Diagram Filters being user specific and...global

[mmo]

The referenced thread did not answer my question.

Meanwhile I ran into another issue:

I marked certain classes and lifelines (in sequence diagrams) using a "Keyword" (since that is one of the few fields one can filter on).

In some SDs I would also need to mark certain messages with some tag, that allows to filter them (messages between lifelines that are *not* filtered.
However, there seem to be no properties-field that one can filter on that is shared by Sequence or Object instances and Messages. Hence one can not define a diagram filter that switches messages on/off (simultaneously with lifelines).

This whole filtering in EA seems to me like a not very well conceptualized after-thought and is not really useful.  

What is lacking is:

• filtering by arbitrary tags
• a choosable default filter for a project

M.

[qwerty]

Unfortunately there are a couple of areas where the design-by-coincidence principle has been applied in EA. Most obvious the use case behind many features has not been synthesized. It's more like "this looks cool, let's make something shiny". Too bad, especially as EA itself has the capability to make a design with use cases and requirements. Without knowing: the shoe maker always wears the worst shoes and the roof maker always has wet rooms. So likely Sparx is not using EA for the design.

q.

[ducatiross]

I came across this thread when searching for answers to another thread about AS-IS/To-BE modelling (http://www.sparxsystems.com/cgi-bin/yabb/YaBB.cgi?num=1417621125)

I wondered whether diagram filters would be an answer to the AS-IS/TO-BE problem, at least on a visibility level. So I tried it and it does a reasonable job of showing/hiding elements or connectors as required. But I would agree that other attributes need to be sources for filters, such as the Tag Values.

However, this raised a couple of more questions :-
- what is the intended use of the Keywords attribute and should this be used to store descriptors, such as AS-IS December 2014, TO-BE January 2015 which can then be used in filters ?
- There is no appararent way to put an 'expiry date' on an element, which would then enable filters that say 'Show me all objects where Expiry Date > 1/1/2015
- Filters only have an effect on diagrams, when in reality, you may want them also to have an effect on the model itself. This is much more difficult, but would enable more comprehensive, context-dependent anlaysis of the model itself. e.g. "find me all the messages that exist beyond 1/1/2015" or even better "find me all the elements that have a relationship to the work package needed for transition phase 1a. It would provide a better answer to the original question around as-is/to-be modelling as everything could have an expiry date or be linked to another element such as an ArchiMate plateau.

So, to summarise, how should keywords be used, and can elements have expiry dates that are searchable/filterable ?