Instability of rtf document generation in 9

[Graham_Moir]

I'm finding the RTF generator in 9 much less stable than in 8.  It used to crash fairly regularly in 8,  but nowhere near as much as it does in 9.  Using a model in 9 that was originally put together with EA 8, generating the same document multiple times without restarting EA predictably seems to follow one of these 2 sequences.

1.  First run, generally OK
2.  Second or third run comes up with "EA encountered an improper argument"  followed by crash to desktop

or

1.  First run only picks up Master document template and none of the model documents resulting in output with a cover page only.  
2.  Once this happens the generator never finds the full virtual document definition unless you generate a different document and come back to the original one.

On top of that there's
a. The issue skiwi has raised with items such as diagram legends and hyperlinks being picked up and erroneously, irritatingly, added to the output document.  
b.  Numbering problems when iterating through child packages.  I notice from the release notes that this functionality has been touched to "fix" it but in my case it used to work in EA 8, but now I get level 3 which should be say 3.1.1 jumping back to 3.x  and level 4 jumping forward to level 5 as  3.1.0.0.1   This is without changing any templates in 9.

Anyone else experiencing similar problems ?  

[skiwi]

I can confirm this behaviour in spades.
I reported it from one of the beta releases.

[jean-eric]

I'm always having really bad times with report templating, since 7.5. It's just a nightmare when you need to change a template, because you never know what is going to happen, and how much time it will take to fix what used to work previously. I've been experiencing so many weird things, the latest ones:

• I worked so far with a local .eap file, and a customized Normal.rtf. Lately I connected to a DBMS shared repository, and created an empty blank template, just 'to see'. Result: none of my custom styles are made available, and 'updating' styles ('from normal.rtf' according to the message box) does not change anything !...
• By the way, updating styles when working on my local project does not do better: loosing all colors !... (Actually, the only way I found to update styles safely is to export to Word, do the job, and import back)
• Moving sections up or down might sometimes jump more than one level, or even going the reverse direction !...
• I tried to do the job by exporting to an rtf file, reordering my sections around within Word, and reimporting into EA: i get back the content as i left it in Word, but the order of sections within the 'Sections' pane is not aligned with the content !...
• Another one 'for the fun': everything looks OK from within the template editor AND rtf export, but the report i get is missing many parts, and the title of the only (and same) table of the 5 which should appear, is placed between to value rows !...

Just unbelievable - and unmanageable.
It's so bad: being able to deliver the content of a model (and getting back the revisions) through (well structured and pleasant) reports is a key point to work with the business stakeholders !...

[skiwi]

One thing I cannot repeat enough, and that has solved many of our problems,
is that is is essential to have one, and one only, set of styles for all document templates.
NEVER change styles in a template, always update in normal.rtf and update (update all templates).

This is exacerbated by the choice and generation of RTF as the file format, and the decades long issues Word has dealing with list styles, and redefinition of styles in a compound document.

[Graham_Moir]

I'm finding the RTF generator in 9 much less stable than in 8.  It used to crash fairly regularly in 8,  but nowhere near as much as it does in 9.  Using a model in 9 that was originally put together with EA 8, generating the same document multiple times without restarting EA predictably seems to follow one of these 2 sequences.

1.  First run, generally OK
2.  Second or third run comes up with "EA encountered an improper argument"  followed by crash to desktop

or

1.  First run only picks up Master document template and none of the model documents resulting in output with a cover page only.  
2.  Once this happens the generator never finds the full virtual document definition unless you generate a different document and come back to the original one.

On top of that there's
a. The issue skiwi has raised with items such as diagram legends and hyperlinks being picked up and erroneously, irritatingly, added to the output document.  
b.  Numbering problems when iterating through child packages.  I notice from the release notes that this functionality has been touched to "fix" it but in my case it used to work in EA 8, but now I get level 3 which should be say 3.1.1 jumping back to 3.x  and level 4 jumping forward to level 5 as  3.1.0.0.1   This is without changing any templates in 9.

Anyone else experiencing similar problems ?  

I've raised a bug report for all this.

[Oliver F.]

b.  Numbering problems when iterating through child packages.  I notice from the release notes that this functionality has been touched to "fix" it but in my case it used to work in EA 8, but now I get level 3 which should be say 3.1.1 jumping back to 3.x  and level 4 jumping forward to level 5 as  3.1.0.0.1   This is without changing any templates in 9.

Anyone else experiencing similar problems ?  

Same here !!!  

[Oliver F.]

Since in the meantime 906 and 907 have been released, can somebody confirm a fix for this?

Oliver

[skiwi]

Nope, but we have found that manually uninstalling EA 8 or EA 9 beta,
rebooting, and then separately installing EA 9 does seem to reduce the incidence of this.

[skiwi]

I can confirm that Sparx have confirmed the crash as an Issue ID: 11059255

[Jan Dickele]

b.  Numbering problems when iterating through child packages.  I notice from the release notes that this functionality has been touched to "fix" it but in my case it used to work in EA 8, but now I get level 3 which should be say 3.1.1 jumping back to 3.x  and level 4 jumping forward to level 5 as  3.1.0.0.1   This is without changing any templates in 9.

Anyone else experiencing similar problems ?  

Same here !!!  

Same here. I can not use version 9 with this new 'Feature'. I have reported it as bug.

[aldr1c]

Any timescale on a resolution to this 'bug'?  With an unworkable report generator, the business case to use this tool (and expand the user base at work) is seriously impacted.  The lack of a reproducibly accurate report is rather embarrassing - I corrected a model report, and 2 hours later - with nothing in the model (or even the computer - I was in a meeting during the time) altered, the report was borked once more.

I too have had random hangs and crashes - often when trying to view rtf files generated by the tool.  Package reports work with the diagrams, master/sub document reports do not.  I would love to pass on some debug info, however none seems to be getting generated on my machines.

[skiwi]

With an unworkable report generator

I can't say the report generator is unworkable for us.
With some care and the work arounds (see previous posts in this thread) our documents come out reliably.
I hope Sparx will in the next release, however, strive to continue to address the usability and stability of the document generator, and improve the regression testing!

[aldr1c]

OK, let me put some context around this.  I use the term unworkable because there is currently no assurance that the reports generated will be based on the data against which they were originally written.  Thus, 2 runs of the same report can lead to 2 different result sets and possibly 2 different engineers working against different data.  Another issue (reported elsewhere iirc) is that in a master/sub document report, a model report based on a query that returns a diagram will result in a blank page (suggesting no data, although usually the generator will omit empty sections), however a report run against the model document itself will return with the error 'Document Generation Failed', with no additional information.  Running a diagram report against the package works of course, however the diagrams required are in several packages in the tree.

Now, I really like this tool - I have been using it and publicising it in the places I work, however whilst the report generator is 'under the weather', I cannot really push for its increasing use - chance of much egg on ones face :-/

[skiwi]

Yes, we don't use queries in our reports, so haven't encountered issues there.
I do wish Sparx would treat issues with documentation generation with far more urgency.
I would be more than happy to test betas with document fixes (and improvements) for them .

[fwoolz]

"Improper argument" crashes here when using a Master document... running the EA 9 build 907.