New EA Business and Software Engineering Edition installation

[Modesto Vega]

I am configuring a brand new installation of EA Business and Software Engineering Edition v 13.0.1310 for a team of about 5 users and would like some thoughts/opinions/ideas on how to address a couple of aspects of the installation:

The repository -  ultimately we are going to have the repository on a private cloud, possibly, but not necessarily, AWS; however the wheels here move slowly, very slowly, and would like to have the team collaborating before a decision is made. This is going to require a tactical solution; so the question is, can any think of any available options that does not involved procuring and plugging to a secure network a piece of tin (either virtual/cloud or real)?

"The metamodel" - I also want to customise EA for our specific needs and, as those who have read some of my previous posts know, I will typically approach this by developing a metamodel, which I have started to do, however, based on previous experience I am not convinced this is the best approach. I would also appreciate any thoughts/ideas/opinions on this.

[P.S.: A customised metamodel will be either an extension of TOGAF or the Zachman framework]

[qwerty]

I would simply setup a MySQL server, even if running on a "Do NOT turn off!"- workstation to get things running. Without knowing the politics of your site it's hard to tell what would be best. I found that the way of least resistance will work like an ice breaker.

I'd also start developing a meta model from the very beginning. If you are going to model a decent system there is no way around that. Although the EA way of creating a MDG is a bit sparxian you should not get scared. It's always worth the effort.

q.

[Modesto Vega]

Thanks qwerty, I will try to see if we can move MySQL forward; at some point I also thought about PostgreSQL.

Regarding the meta model, I have no problem starting one from scratch as I have a good idea of what I want to achieve. Are there any changes to the way you create a meta model in v13. I noticed 2 options under Technology/Publish that look interesting: Technology/Publish/Publish Diagram as Pattern and Technology/Publish/Package as UML Profile. Any comments on what they do and if they are new will be much appreciated.

[qwerty]

I wrote a short article about MDGs you can find here. A more detailed instruction can be found in my MDG book.

q.

[Modesto Vega]

I have gone through both your book and article before and I am just reacquainting myself with it. Just a number of observations I would like to note, not sure if this has anything to do with the fact that I am using version 13, instead of 11 or 12:

1) The Extend relationship seems to have changed to a line ending into a black triangle, I am assuming this is the correct relationship
2) I am having some difficulty relating 2 stereotypes via an aggregation
3) EA no longer has a Diagram_Class metaclass, what has taken its place, the DiagramFrame metaclass
4) Could somebody please remind me if the Package metaclass could be used to extend the types of packages that can be created inside a model?


Edit
Just an update on this, the answer to 3) appears to be the Diagram_Logical metaclass which is added to the profile when using Add Diagram Extension helper

It appears the answer to 2) is to link 2 stereotypes with any other relationship and change the type to an Aggregation. This is very sparxian, is there a better way of doing this.

[qwerty]

1) I compared V12/13 and found both extends relations to appear the same way.
2) What is your concrete issue here? Yes, this is sparxian. You can alternatively choose aggregation from the class toolbox.
3) There has never been a pre-defined diagram meta type. That needs to be input manually.
4) Without having verified this would be my guess that the Package meta type is just for that purpose.

q.

P.S. You could download the sample MDG from the book once again. Some constructs might give you the kick in the right direction.

[KP]

I noticed 2 options under Technology/Publish that look interesting: Technology/Publish/Publish Diagram as Pattern and Technology/Publish/Package as UML Profile. Any comments on what they do and if they are new will be much appreciated.

They have been there forever; just the names have changed. (Previously Save Diagram as UML Pattern and Save Package as UML Profile, from memory).

[Modesto Vega]

P.S. You could download the sample MDG from the book once again. Some constructs might give you the kick in the right direction.

The 1st thing I did is to download the sample MDG  , it was a good refresher as I don't develop meta models very often.

1) I compared V12/13 and found both extends relations to appear the same way.

On the sample MDG extension is handled with an Association with a <<extends>> stereotype, while in version 13 it is handled through an Extension with no stereotype, hence the question. i know this slightly pedantic.

4) Without having verified this would be my guess that the Package meta type is just for that purpose.

I will give it a try and report the findings.

I noticed 2 options under Technology/Publish that look interesting: Technology/Publish/Publish Diagram as Pattern and Technology/Publish/Package as UML Profile. Any comments on what they do and if they are new will be much appreciated.

They have been there forever; just the names have changed. (Previously Save Diagram as UML Pattern and Save Package as UML Profile, from memory).

They might have been there forever but the ribbon makes them much more visible than before.

[qwerty]

Obviously EA treats both connectors the same way. But most likely the new V13 Extension might not be backward compatible (which on the other hand does not seem to be relevant).

q.

[Uffe]

The change in the extends connector from a stereotyped association to its own metatype happened a few years ago (v11?) -- it's just someone hasn't updated their sample model to reflect this.
I'd be surprised if the change was forwards-compatible, but I'd be even more surprised if it wasn't backwards-compatible.

However, what we're talking about here is compatibility of the profile model -- not the resultant profile. The extends connector is interpreted by EA during profile generation, and is not present in the XML output. There, the concept is represented with the <AppliesTo> tag, and that hasn't changed.

So a profile created with EA 9 will work in EA 13, and vice versa.

If you've got an old profile model knocking around that was created in EA 9, you should be able to import that into EA 13 and create a correct profile from it. But the reverse is likely not true.


/Uffe

[Uffe]

3) There has never been a pre-defined diagram meta type. That needs to be input manually.

Or using the "Diagram Extension" profile helper. This one is actually pretty useful.

2) I am having some difficulty relating 2 stereotypes via an aggregation
...
It appears the answer to 2) is to link 2 stereotypes with any other relationship and change the type to an Aggregation. This is very sparxian, is there a better way of doing this.

I'm missing something here. Why do you want to draw an aggregation between two stereotypes? What does that do in the profile?

/Uffe

[qwerty]

That aggregation is probably my fault. My sample model still has the aggregation as a consequence of transforming the profile from a meta model and not removing the aggregation information. Since EA doesn't care, I simply did not alter that. Also for the extends, it looks as if the sample has been broken at some time, somehow. The book uses the solid triangle extends and that had been made using the sample model. Well, shit happens. I'll make a correction.

q.

P.S. I have uploaded a model with according annotations.

[Modesto Vega]

Thanks Uffe, thanks qwerty.

That aggregation is probably my fault. My sample model still has the aggregation as a consequence of transforming the profile from a meta model and not removing the aggregation information. Since EA doesn't care, I simply did not alter that. Also for the extends, it looks as if the sample has been broken at some time, somehow. The book uses the solid triangle extends and that had been made using the sample model. Well, shit happens. I'll make a correction.

q.

P.S. I have uploaded a model with according annotations.

The aggregation is indeed qwerty's fault but I am not going to blame him for that  It also provides me with a nice excuse to slightly redirect the conversation.

This way to "develop" a meta model works well; on version 13 works better than in any previous versions. However, it is very "sparxian" because it works with stereotypes and using aggregations between stereotypes could be a bit of a heresy. Of course, if I was going to this on a non-sparxian way, as I have done before, I will use proper UML class diagrams to do this and aggregations could play a role on this; the difficulty/effort is in converting them to the sparxian way of developing meta models.

[qwerty]

Being formally correct often pays off. And it prevents from getting in situations like the here mentioned. However, being holier than the Pope does not seem to make sense either. I got so much used to be Sparxian, I could beat myself for doing so many stupid things...

q.

[Modesto Vega]

Being formally correct often pays off. And it prevents from getting in situations like the here mentioned. However, being holier than the Pope does not seem to make sense either. I got so much used to be Sparxian, I could beat myself for doing so many stupid things...

q.

We probably all do many stupid things with Sparx and without ...

I have now 3 profiles, including 1 for toolboxes and another for diagram extensions, and have hit the 1st problem I cannot seem to solve, once the profile is imported I cannot stereotype diagrams. I can stereotype anything else, classes, relationships and packages but not diagrams. Am I missing something?