Using Office MDF extension

[Knightrider]

Hi team

I am trying to load a data model from an excel spreadsheet using the MS MDF Office extension. I've had a reasonable amount of success loading a bunch of application components and their tagged values from a spreadsheet. I've even got the Diagram to generate automatically showing the components including the hierarchy of nested components.

What I'm struggling with is how to create information flow links automatically between the components using a spreadsheet. The spreadsheet format can be quite flexible as I am writing the application to generate it. Has anyone done this before or know what to do? When I try to create the information flow in the profile, there seems to be no way of connecting the source and destination systems.

The reason I want to do this is because we have information about our applications in spreadsheets and we have over a hundred systems. Any automation to capture the application components and the information flow between them to create the application landscape diagram will save me a lot of time.

[Geert Bellekens]

I haven't use the Office MDG before, but I did develop my own Excel importer, which is available for free.
If you know a bit VBA it should be fairly easy to extend it to import relations as well.

Geert

[Knightrider]

Many thanks Greet. It looks like a neat piece of work.
I think I would struggle with learning VBA in the short time frame I have to get this implemented.
Thanks again.

[Knightrider]

Hi again Greet and community

I have finally decided to take your advice Greet  and try and modify your code to import my model from Excel. I initially used the MDG Excel extension but found its functionality limiting. I was told by Sparx support that the features I need will be available in future releases.

Changing the code will be quite challenging for me as I am new to Sparx EA, Data Modelling and VB!!! Any guidance will be really appreciated.

The following will be the modifications I will need to make to your code so some pointers about what to change will really help.

1. Add extra columns to the 'ElementsAndAttributes' such as 'Alias'.
2. Allow NEW tagged values to be imported for Component type elements.
3. Allow the connector of type information flow to be created.
4. Create relationship between two Elements using the created connector by specifying source/target.
5. Load properties of a connector
6. Add 'Information Items Conveyed' to the connector.

Any help will really be appreciated on this Greet.

I wont be offended if anyone else who has done anything similar chips in

[Knightrider]

Ok I manged to get everything working except number 6. Does anyone have an example in VB of this please? I simply have a connector and want to add a conveyed item to it. I think its been a long day and my brain has over heated!

Thanks in advance.

[qwerty]

Look out for the ConveyedItems collection of the connector. I haven't used it via automation, but you should be fine adding the items you need to this collection.
http://sparxsystems.com/enterprise_architect_user_guide/13.0/automation/the_addnew_function.html

q.