Finer control over model content in RTF documents

[mjtapp]

I've been using EA for several years now and have found it to be a very useful tool and the RTF editor has certainly improved significantly over that time. But if there is one area that I've hit over and over again in the editor, it is the lack of the ability to have greater control over what is and isn't included in the content of a given document.

Primarily this comes up when I've got a package/model with different types of elements and connectors and I only want certain types of connections or elements on the other end of the connection to be shown in the document.

Here is an example of what I mean:

I have a use case model where a given use case has associations with actors and other use cases (which are 'included' in the use case). In my document I want to list the actors in one section and included use cases in another. However, because I don't have the fine control I need, it is impossible to do this. I can't tell the document template 'only show this type of connected element here' or 'only show elements with this stereotype here'.

I've found that this situation is the biggest limitation with the RTF editor (and it comes up more often that you might think) and a feature that addresses this would, I think, be very useful.

[nara_c]

Hi,

I agree that having the ability to filter out elements or connections by type would be a great improvement in the documentation ability of EA.

While this feature is currently not available, there is a possible work around to achieve what you want by using a Word Master document or Virtual Documents.  

Have you considered splitting up your Use Case model package into Subpackages and generating the documentation at the lower level?  You can then include only the induvidual packages that you require into a Word master document or your virtual document and hopefully get finer control on your generated documentation.

Let me know if this works for you.  Needless to say, if the feature you requested was there then such workarounds would not be required.

[nara_c]

Oh and BTW here are the online links to the documentation options I suggested:

Virtual documents:
http://www.sparxsystems.com.au/EAUserGuide/virtualdocuments.htm

Master Documents:
http://www.sparxsystems.com.au/EAUserGuide/usingmsword.htm

And one other thing, the Legacy RTF generator also allows you to do some filter options in the generation and you may want to explore this a bit.

You could for instance perform an update of time stamps on the elements you want to exclude and then generate documentation for objects modified before that date.

http://www.sparxsystems.com.au/EAUserGuide/applyafilter.htm

[mjtapp]

Thanks for the ideas, I had a go with them, and although I think they should work, they unfortunately don't.

What I tried doing was moving elements into other packages and then marking those packages as 'Exclude package from RTF reports', I also tried setting status' and excluding elements with the given status, all to no avail.

The problem is that when you set up an RTF template and choose to report on Connector-->Source/Target-->Element, the document generator does not apply any of the filters to the elements at the end of the connector. This means that you can either choose to report on all source/target connectors for all the elements in your RTF document or none. This is the basis for my request.

BTW, virtual documents also don't work, for a similar reason, but mostly because they work at the package level, which is not fine-grained enough for what I'm trying to achieve.

Of course I can always choose to set up the template to include the connectors and then post-edit the output, or populate some other element attribute with the information I want to report on, but it kind of defeats the purpose for using the generator in the first place...

[brankin]

I'm a brand new user to EA and I also have this problem.

For my requirements, in one report I need to only include the Realisation connections and for another I would like to either have all connections or possibly include only the Aggregation connections.

Has anyone attempted to solve this using the automation interface?