Upgrading from version 12

[Ryan]

I'm making a return to Sparx Enterprise Architect after a hiatus of 4 plus years and naturally, things have moved on and there's a new version of Sparx. Since I've been out of the game for a while and in reading the various posts in the forum, it seems that there's a division between the old and new (let me know if I'm way off base). If not, is there value to upgrade from version 12 to the latest or greatest? If yes, what are the key improvements other than the look and feel that justifies the investment?

[Geert Bellekens]

Hi Ryan

There are definitely a number of good improvements that make it worth upgrading.

- placement guidelines on diagram
- Active directory integration
- Diagram legends

- and probably many others that I'm forgetting.

Geert

[Ryan]

Thanks Geert.

• When you say smart placement guides, do you mean alignment of elements/objects on a diagram?
• With legends, do you mean auto-generated legends?
• As far as I remember Active Directory support has been around for a while.

If yes, these seem mostly cosmetic than a significant change in the tooling or its capabilities. Happy to be told otherwise if there's real value in upgrading.

[Geert Bellekens]

Thanks Geert.

• When you say smart placement guides, do you mean alignment of elements/objects on a diagram?

Yes. This alone is a feature worth upgrading for.

• With legends, do you mean auto-generated legends?

No, diagram legends allow you to color the elements and relations based on selected properties (such as status, tagged values, etc..)

• Active Directory isn't a must since I'll be mostly working on a single machine

The Active Directory one is a major improvement for enterprise environments as it eliminates the overhead of creating/deleting users for the model.

Geert

[Ryan]

• Out of interest, why do you say that placement guides are a feature worth upgrading for?
• Maybe I'm missing something. Do you have an example of diagram legends as it'll help visualize the value it brings?
• That's fair although I'll be the lone architect for now and it isn't the most compelling benefit now

[Geert Bellekens]

• Out of interest, why do you say that placement guides are a feature worth upgrading for?

It greatly simplifies making (neat) diagrams and thus saves time and frustration. Tools like Visio already have this for decades.

• Maybe I'm missing something. Do you have an example of diagram legends as it'll help visualize the value it brings?

Suppose you have a tagged value that indicates the lifecycle of an application with values: "phase-in", "live", "deprecated", "retired"
You can then make a diagram legend to that automatically colors the applications based on this value.
If you place this legend on the diagrams it shows the lifecycle status as a color.
If you create another diagram legend for another aspect (e.g. business fit, cost, importance,...) it shows that as a color.

• That's fair although I'll be the lone architect for now and it isn't the most compelling benefit now

Geert

[Roche Pso]

Suppose you have a tagged value that indicates the lifecycle of an application with values: "phase-in", "live", "deprecated", "retired"
You can then make a diagram legend to that automatically colors the applications based on this value.
If you place this legend on the diagrams it shows the lifecycle status as a color.
If you create another diagram legend for another aspect (e.g. business fit, cost, importance,...) it shows that as a color.

Also, you can have one legend using fill colours for one tag and another legend using another tag to do borders and then mix and match as needed on a single diagram simply by having the legends there or not