Validating master - replicate generate / merge

[EricP]

Currently using EA Professional version 7.5 build 850 (yes, I finally upgraded from 7.1.833).

Up until a week or so ago I was the only one doing design work on this project, and so there wasn't a need to coordinate multiple users in one EA database.  Last week another software engineer joined us, and so we now have to figure out the "right" way for two people to operate in one EA project file (with the Professional version, i.e. no relational database support).

I've been reading all I can find (which is not much) on creating a design master and creating replicates, then modifying the replicates, and merging them back in to the master.  So far we have done one round trip and it seems to have worked... with the operative word being "seems".

I posted a support request about how to "diff" modified replicates with the design master to see what the changes are, and haven't received a reply.  So, I'll ask here... is there a way to see what the differences are between a replicate and the master before the merge?

This leads into the whole question of how we are supposed to be able to validate that the replicate merge didn't introduce any unwanted changes into the design master.  How can we be sure that what we got was what we expected?  We are using this on a medical device project and so the US FDA is going to be on us like ugly on an ape if we can't show that we have validated this tool properly including and especially all this design master / replicate capability.

So, in general, how do we go about validating that the merge completed without unexpected / unwanted changes?

[Paolo F Cantoni]

(with the Professional version, i.e. no relational database support).

Hi Eric,

Just a clarification...  Professional version does not support RDBMS server connection.  .EAP files, being MS Access databases, ARE relational databases.

Paolo