Checking of constraints in automation

[qwerty]

I'm facing the task of checking meta constraints introduced by the profile. There are connectors which are allowed and others which are not. When using the GUI there will be the "Not compliant" pop-up when trying to create an excluded connector. But the API does not croak in any way. It creates anything (like an association between packages). Now, this could well be regarded a bug, though I fear Sparx will have excuses. But from a testing viewpoint it's just horrible. It means I have to create all connectors manually to see whether they work or not. That's a task for people that have killed father or mother. The only thing I can do is to deliver banana software (will ripe at the customer's site) to see if people run into issues and then fix them.

What do you think?

q.

[Geert Bellekens]

I'm facing the task of checking meta constraints introduced by the profile. There are connectors which are allowed and others which are not. When using the GUI there will be the "Not compliant" pop-up when trying to create an excluded connector. But the API does not croak in any way. It creates anything (like an association between packages). Now, this could well be regarded a bug, though I fear Sparx will have excuses. But from a testing viewpoint it's just horrible. It means I have to create all connectors manually to see whether they work or not. That's a task for people that have killed father or mother. The only thing I can do is to deliver banana software (will ripe at the customer's site) to see if people run into issues and then fix them.

What do you think?

q.

You could either use some kind of GUI simulator test software that will click on buttons and stuff, or write a test function yourself.
For the latter you'll have to try and replicate EA's behavior: parsing the MDG and deciding based on that if a relation is valid or not.
This gets harder if you want to include existing relations from UML or other MDG's

Geert

[qwerty]

Ah, thanks. I once had used such a click-test software. A programmatic approach (API that behaves like GUI) would be preferred, but you have to take what you can get.

q.

[Geert Bellekens]

banana software (will ripe at the customer's site)

Love that one  , hadn't heard it before...

Geert

[qwerty]

Seems like this is German term. Wiki names it "banana principle" (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perpetual_beta and switch to the German equivalent). I did not know that one, but I guess everyone in IT in Germany knows about Banana Software...

q.

[KP]

I'm facing the task of checking meta constraints introduced by the profile. There are connectors which are allowed and others which are not. When using the GUI there will be the "Not compliant" pop-up when trying to create an excluded connector. But the API does not croak in any way. It creates anything (like an association between packages). Now, this could well be regarded a bug, though I fear Sparx will have excuses. But from a testing viewpoint it's just horrible. It means I have to create all connectors manually to see whether they work or not. That's a task for people that have killed father or mother. The only thing I can do is to deliver banana software (will ripe at the customer's site) to see if people run into issues and then fix them.

What do you think?

q.

It shouldn't be difficult for Sparx to add an IsLegalLink() function to automation. The logic is already there, it would just need the wrapper. Stick in a bug report and see what happens.

[qwerty]

Will do. Thanks :-)

q.