Strategy for icons folder when creating profile and MDG

[Mauricio Moya (Arquesoft)]

Hi, I would like to read your opinions about a good strategy in order to let different users to generate a profile (or MDG), having in mind the icons are defined as local file for the user is creating the profile.

The scenary and restrictions are:

• There is a shared model in a database
• Multple users want to update the profiles via re-generating the profile files and the MDG files
• The profile definition exist in the same model (so, we have to generate the MDG and import the MDG in the same model)
• It is not possible to have a shared folder to share the icons

Do you know any way to define the icon folder via a parameter or something not depending on the user creating the stereotype in the profile?

[qwerty]

I would not know why someone wants profiles to be changed dynamically. From what I learned you should investigate and analyse thoroughly what goes into a profile and for heavens sake not change it (or at least at a maximum of one update per year).

q.

[Sunshine]

Sounds like it could be painful to do that. Unless the team is cohesive and all aligned to the needs for the MDG. However if you are a masochist then you could try linked folders and change the link for each user.

[Paolo F Cantoni]

Sounds like you're being offered the Eric Morcombe Gambit - "Get out of that without moving" or even the infamous Catch-22.

You need to share files, but you can't (not allowed to?) share files?

Since you're not allowed to create a shared folder, I assume you can't link them either.  SneakerNet sounds like the only option.  But then you ARE sharing files, so why inhibit you in the first place?

But, as Sunshine says, your collaboration needs to be well orchestrated (ArchiMate based pun intended).

Paolo

[Geert Bellekens]

We treat MDG developments the same way we treat writing code.

We we connect the profile packages to version control (TFS in our case), and manually version control the all the files (icons, profile xml files, mts file, mdg file,...)

By mapping our version control workspace to the mapped home drive (H:) we can ensure stable file paths for the icons
(e.g. H:\TFS\MyMDG\Icons\someStereotypeIcon.bmp)

Geert

PS. Since we work completely on remote apps (and thus we are all on the same computer) we have to use the full network path as the mapped path on the TFS workspace mapping (e.g. \\servername\username\documents\TFS)

[Mauricio Moya (Arquesoft)]

@qwerty: I'm not pretending to generate the MDG "dinamically". It just have to be updated from time to time (aprox once, every 6 months). This is because we create new stereotypes we have not considered before, or add/modify tag values to old ones.

@Geert: previously I considered MDG generation as a thing created in setup time. That is why we didn't create any special way of storing the MDG, except the profile definition itself in the model. Your approach seems logical to me, so I will make the suitable changes in order to consider the MDG generation as a code compilation. Thanks.

Really I was expecting some solution as "make an environment variable and...", but the solution of Geert seems fine.

[Mauricio Moya (Arquesoft)]

My final solution was:

1. Create a script that change the _icon folder definitions for every stereotypes in every profile in my MDG.
2. Use a folder easy to replicate in different computers (eg: C:\EA\MDG\icons). Avoid folders related to desktop or user based locations
3. Share in another tool (version control system, dropbox, sharepoint, drive, etc), the profiles XML, the icons, MTS file, MDG file and an export of searches in XML.
4. MTS folder definitions refers to C:\EA\MDG folder
5. Search XML has to be imported in the secondary computer generating MDG.