integration of Flash development in EA ?

[JohnDoe]

Hi,

first of all: EA rocks !!

Second: Using EA for nesting UseCases, ActivityModels, SequenceDiagrams it is a dream !! But when it comes to prototype concrete screen designs, things get very complicated. EA is the best tool for modeling UML as I've seen so far. I narrowed down the application model for UC's, Activities and Sequences and discribed control and base classes. EA is very very good here to built non redundant class models.

But now I have to create the screen designs for users and then define the backend / frontend communication. Since my customers are not interested in browsing through class models, they rather want to discuss about concrete screen examples, whereas functionality in the back is more a "programmer's thing" (in their opinion).

My screen examples are now being done in Flash IDE since it is a rapid protoptyping interface. In my applicaiton I have 500+ of input fields spread over several dozens of screens, so it is absolutely no fun to create those objects in EA and then go to flash IDE and recreate them there again to get the visual. Another problem is that you can not code in EA in a reasonable way, so I am forced to switch to Flash at some point and then there is the old problem: Who is the leading model ? EA model or Flash sources ?

Flash even offers ActionScript 2.0 object oriented language and a flash screen can be connected to a actionscript class inside the flash IDE, so my idea (and hope) is to integrate EA and flash design, which means to use EA as driving model for the creation of flash files.  There is even some embedded functionality inside the EA menu to start, compile and debug sources, but only for Java Eclipse based developments. There are some nice examples about creating dynamic diagrams while debugging a java session. With this functionality, EA would be a killer tool for me and I guess for a lot of ActionScript developers.

Are there any plans or tutorials for integrating flash (adobe.com), MTASC.org or HAXE.org into EA ?

By the way: it is the same story with my python based server. At some point of development, you must create the class stubs and then switch to Python.

Your java examples of integrating / linking Eclipse and EA are a good idea of what I am looking for when using ActionScript(Flash) and Python.http://www.sparxsystems.com/resources/demos/debuggingjava/DebuggingJ03.htm

Regards
Bernd

[JohnDoe]

Another nice feature would be, if I could define my own visual elements inside the perspective toolboxes:

I would like to create my own ActionScript perspective, where I put my own screen class, my own list class, buttons class etc. all being represented by their own user defined previews (i.e. my gif or png Image of a screen, listbox, button etc.). So my screen designs in the diagrams could have a different visual view than those (relatively simple ones) embedded within the user interface perspective. And I could link them as well to the ActionScript classes (often class "MovieClip"), so it would be very easy to design a new screen by dragging objects out of the perspective while those objects are immediately usable (can be generated directly as usable ActionScript source). At the moment, I have to change the user interfaces visual and redefine the class definitions.

Regards
Bernd