Locate Classifier/Instance

[thomaskilian]

Hi,
I am looking for a way to find the Instances of a class like I can find the Classifier of an Instance. For the latter I have a context menu which points to the according Classifier in the Project Browser. What I miss is the other way around. The only way (I know) is to use Find in Diagrams which will indicate Link and Classifier. But if the element (for any reason) is not in any diagram I will never find it.

Any work around or should that be a feature request?

[Paolo F Cantoni]

Bump...

I'm facing the same problem...

I'm going to work around it by creating special relationships between the classifier and its instances.  That way, I can use the Add[ch9658]Related Elements... menu item to collect them...

What do others think of providing more explicit support in EA for this visualisation?  We'd incorporate Thomas' points above also...

Paolo

[Jüri]

Totally support it. I have exactly the same problem and I am using the approach as Paulo:)

However, not all others are using it (they don't remember or care or...) and therefore at the end of the day we have a problem:(

So, automatic creating of connection would help us a lot!

[Frank Horn]

So, automatic creating of connection would help us a lot!

But optionally, please. This would be redundant information which I would hate to have forced into my models.

I would very much prefer an additional search option for this, or maybe an Add...Instances menu.

[Paolo F Cantoni]

So, automatic creating of connection would help us a lot!

But optionally, please. This would be redundant information which I would hate to have forced into my models.

I would very much prefer an additional search option for this, or maybe an Add...Instances menu.

Technically, this is not redundant information but rendering of existing information.  The problem essentially comes about because of an architectural inconsistency in EA.  The nesting connector actually exists but the rendering of the nesting when the nestling and the nest are on the same diagram isn't.

My recent post on support of «implicit» relationships is another example.  We appear to need EA to render certain relationships which are specified by means other than connectors as edges.  That way, we wouldn't have to go through these "hoops".

In the interim, we could manage things better by having a set of optional functionality (as you suggest) to require EA to manage these "non-edge" relationships as edges.  Something like:
[X] Manage relationship properties as connectors
    [X] Manage attributes as AssociationEnds
    [X] Manage element nestings as connections
    [X] Manage implicit relationships as connections

Unsetting the first box would unset the nested ones...

For those who would accept the overhead (which might not be that much) it would at least bring consistency.

Paolo

[Frank Horn]

Paolo,

I still think having a nested element (meaning it's below the parent in the project browser, or more formally, a child tag of the packagedElement tag in xmi 2.1, plus a nesting connector would be a redundancy, and I wouldn't like that one bit.

The reason is I'm using XMI 2.1 exports to generate code, state machine definitions and such, and I don't want to have my xmi bloated. It can be big enough as it is, as it has to contain all dependencies (meaning I have to export the topmost package containing all dependencies for the elements I want to process).
So e.g. I never define an attribute when I already have an association, a.s.o.

As for rendering, I quite agree. It would be great to have options (per model, per package, or per diagram) to draw a nesting connector when an element is nested within a another one, or an association when an attribute has class type, or implicit relations. But I think these connectors should only be virtual ones, i.e. not connectors in the model, but plain rendering information for the diagram showing them.

Frank

[Michael Barker]

+1

For the modelling that I am doing I would like the class->instance relationship to be modelled as a link or more specifically component->instance.  One of our core use cases for EA is to help with impact analysis.  With this feature we can use the "Add -> Related Elements" feature using an "instance of" link to determine which instances will be affected by a change to a particular component.

A similar feature that would also be useful is links between exposed interfaces and the actual interfaces that they refer to.  This would help by allowing me to use "Add -> Related Elements" to determine which components expose a particular interface.