Version control and Security

[pH]

Hi,
If I have set up version control for my model, what additional benefits I get by Enabling Security feature of EA?
I think security feature is bit of overhead if model is already integrated with version control. Please share your views.

pH

[Geert Bellekens]

With security you can define who get to do what in the model (who is allowed to create new stereotypes, who is allow to create scripts,...) which is something you can't when only using version control.
Especially the stereotype feature is one that is worth turning off for most users.
If you don't then you will end up with hundreds of bogus stereotypes in your model.

Geert

[Helmut Ortmann]

Hello Geert,

could you please elaborate on the Stereotype feature - the hundreds of bogus stereotypes.

Thanks!

Kind regards,

Helmut

[Uffe]

Hello,


User security allows you to restrict what (groups of) users can do. It's not directly related to version control -- indeed, access to version control functions can be controlled with user security.

So it's more a way to enforce policies on how EA should be used, not in terms of modelling language and model content but in terms of what EA functions the modelers may use. If you don't want them to create baselines, you can prevent them from creating baselines. If you don't want to allow them to create stereotypes on the fly, you can nix that.

There are two problems with on-the-fly stereotypes. Number one is that if stereotypes are not properly defined in a metamodel, their meaning is unclear -- essentially they're just labels. The second is that there's no spell check so if your modellers are sloppy you end up with misspelled stereotypes which are annoying to track down. (All on-the-fly stereotypes get stored in the database.)

So. User security allows you to enforce EA usage policies. If that's appropriate in your organization, they can be a great help. If your modellers can be trusted to follow the prescribed policies, or if there are no policies, they're of little use.

HTH,


/Uffe

[Geert Bellekens]

Hello Geert,

could you please elaborate on the Stereotype feature - the hundreds of bogus stereotypes.

Thanks!

Kind regards,

Helmut

Uffe kind of explained my point.
If you don't restrict the creation of stereotypes in user security then everything that gets typed in into a stereotype field gets stored as a stereotype.
This security setting exists from v10 IIRC so I have one client who has over 600 (!) different stereotypes stored in the model ( can you guess in how many ways people can spell "persistent"?)
I've been spending ages going through all these stereotypes bit by bit, cleaning them up as I went along (with some automation support of course

Geert

[Helmut Ortmann]

Hi Geert, Hi Uffe,

Thanks for the distinct explanation.

Kind regards,

Helmut