Data Domains

[lfgcasey]

Hello,

My company is attempting to switch over from CA's ERwin tool to Sparx EA for data modeling. One thing I haven't been able to figure out is how to define and use 'data domains' in EA. I'm using the term 'data domain' in the data modeling sense. The most common illustrative example is Gender, where the column is defined as a VARCHAR that  can only have two values, "Male" or "Female". It's similar to an enumeration in a code sense, but the concept is far more restrictive in that floating point types can have a defined range, etc.

I've looked into the Database Datatypes functionality and that's close but not quite what we need. I've searched the forum and found this thread but it doesn't have a complete answer.

Can anyone confirm/deny the support of 'data domains' in EA, or provide any comparable solution?

Thanks!

[Geert Bellekens]

I think traditionally things like data domains are defined in the logical model rather then the database model. Usually these are defined using UML Datatypes and UML Enumerations.
You would then need an MDA transformation to translate that to database terminology.

I'm not sure if EA can generate code for user defined datatypes. Possible workaround is to define your user defined datatypes in the list of DBMS datatypes.

Geert

[lfgcasey]

Thanks Geert. Can you point me to a user guide link for defining and using UML datatypes and UML enumerations within the logical model?

[qwerty]

You might start here. Additionally type "Database" in the search field of the appearing page and see where it leads you.

q.

[lfgcasey]

Just closing the loop here. One of our Database Engineers was able to figure out the following:

In EA, you can use the Entity Relationship Diagram Toolbox to create a Logical model.  EA creates this as a Class Diagram with a Stereotype of “ERD_Entity”.  These have a  Type field under “RightClick/Features & Properties/Attributes…” lists just major domains like Int Boolean, Character. 

The Data Modeling tool creates a Table with a Stereotype of “table”.  Here you not only pick the domain, but you also pick a length. 

I have not figured out how to create a custom domain like ZipCode nnnnn-nnnn but I’ll bet you can.  I didn’t find anything on the ea documentation (yet…  I didn’t spend a lot of time digging).

[qwerty]

You can create primitives with EA for a database, but it's quite limited. Do not expect anything like Erwin since that's not EA's primary domain. It's more a me too.

.q