Messages

1

General Board / Object API library style documentation

« on: June 07, 2004, 01:14:06 pm »

Hello, been wracking our brains to no avail:
We have a large business object library.  We want to generate documentation for end programmers who will use our library as an "api".

Problem is that we want to generate docs showing PUBLIC scoped methods and attributes only, EA doesn't seem to allow this as an option, or allow an option for selecting specific stereotypes only for classes to document.

Is there a recommended method of approaching this situation?

(Note that we are coding in C# and will be using NDOC to make programmers API reference anyway, this is just about using EA to make a visual diagram showing classes and their relationships and public properties.)

Kind of thinking of those nice big charts Microsoft gives you with visual studio showing the API class relationships in a nice clean graphical manner.


Any thoughts would be greatly appreciated.

2

General Board / Re: Yikes!  Where is the search and replace?

« on: June 04, 2004, 08:01:01 pm »

Thanks for the help, I've checked out the built in search, it's drastically limited and won't search on methods or attributes so for classes it's basically useless.

We've written a search and replace using Automation which works well.

Seems kinda like a fundamental feature so I requested it.

Cheers!

3

General Board / Yikes!  Where is the search and replace?

« on: June 03, 2004, 09:11:29 am »

EA doesn't appear to support searching for attributes or method names and seems to have no search and replace facility at all.

Does anyone know of a third party solution before I write one?

(We are using EA mainly for class diagrams and we're going about renaming some classes.  We're having to go all over the place to rename manually to match)

4

General Board / Duplicated "using" (header) directives

« on: May 28, 2004, 01:51:09 pm »

Hello, can't for the life of me fathom why EA is doing this, but for about 67 of 150 classes when I generate fresh code, it duplicates one of the header directives (actually it's c# and it's a using directive).

I.E. in the Generate Code dialog in the Import(s)/Header(s) edit box I have the following:
using System;
using System.Data;
using CSLA.Data;
using CSLA;

The source code generated is this:
using System;
using System.Data;
using CSLA.Data;
using CSLA;

using CSLA;

With that extra line break and duplicate of the using CSLA line at the bottom which causes an annoying compilation warning and shouldn't be there on principle.

Doesn't seem to matter what I change in the uml class diagram, even if I put in a different using directive in teh UML class properties after that CSLA one, it puts the same CSLA one in again.

Anyone run into this before?

It's preventing us from generating code very often because we have to manually remove that line from a lot of files.

5

General Board / Re: Generate code path - is this a bug?

« on: May 27, 2004, 05:56:31 pm »

Thanks - that was the ticket - also applied the update.

6

General Board / Generate code path - is this a bug?

« on: May 27, 2004, 03:32:12 pm »

We have a very large UML class diagram for C#. And have just reached the stage where we are ready to start coding, there seems to be a problem:

I select the package containing about 300 classes and generate the source code.

All is basically fine at this point.

Now I make a change in one of the generated class files and save it, go back to EA and select that class and Synchronize Model from the popup right click menu.

Nothing happens.

If I right click on that one class and select Generate Code, then manually set the Path field to the correct path of the previously generated source code file, I can then click cancel, go back and synchronize!

This means that the initial auto-generate from the package level did not save the path to link the class to the source code file.

This is obviously a nightmare as this one package alone has over 300 classes in it.

We are not interested in manually editing thousands of classes to point to their own generated source code.

What gives?  Is there a solution here?  Am I wrong in expecting that any time I generate code that EA will save the link between the class and the file it created itself regardless of whether I do it from the package level or one by one class by class?

P.S. language in question is C# and version of EA is 4.00.723

7

General Board / Class "templates" for business objects?

« on: December 23, 2003, 08:43:21 am »

I'm wondering if there is an easier or more "correct" way to do this:

We are using Rockford Lhotkas CSLA business object framework.

We create business object classes in EA that all are inherited from one of the standard CSLA business object classes (i.e. an Editable Root object, Name-value list object etc).

There are several operations in each of our derived classes that must be there to override the base class.

What we do is we have made a "template" class off each of the business class objects that contains the overriden operation definitions.  Then we copy and paste that as a new object and rename the class and customize it for the business object it represents.

What I'm wondering is if there is a way to have a repository of partially completely "template" classes that we can plunk in at any time.  If we can provide the name to use then it could name all the operations correctly and the attributes in question.

Kind of like a paste / search and replace all in one.

So a sample class we have called "Customers" could become a new "suppliers" class quickly and easily.

As it is now, we are copying and pasting and then having to rename every element of the class that has the template name in it.  (I wish we could switch to text mode or something).

Does this make sense?  Is there a better way to deal with creating a large number of business objects based off a small set of common base classes?

8

General Board / c# tags, are we missing something here?

« on: December 23, 2003, 08:37:35 am »

So far, to work with c# we've had to add a "Property" tag, a "readonly" tag, a "writeonly" tag, a "attribute_name" tag etc and that's only for handling properties.

Is there some sort of template we can download that would have provided all those tags and whatever else we will need to add in future to support c# that isn't there now?

(It's a bit frustrating to have to keep digging to figure out these things.)

9

General Board / Re: Code templates & generation: getter &

« on: December 19, 2003, 09:25:49 am »

Hi Olaf, we discovered that when we imported some c# code it made a stereotype called "property" for getters and setters in our code.

If we created a new stereotype called "property" in the Uml Stereotypes configuration screen in EA then used it on new classes it created a proper get and set for them when code was engineered from the diagram.

However it does not appear to be documented anywhere and you can't select a read only or a write only property.

Hope this helps in some way and hope we get an answer about this from someone soon or I'm going to be manually deleting a *lot* of setters for read only properties when we engineer the code from the big project were working on.

Cheers

10

General Board / Re: C# properties

« on: December 22, 2003, 10:03:45 am »

Ahhh...that's how you do it manually!
Thank you!

11

General Board / C# properties

« on: December 18, 2003, 09:56:10 am »

Hi, we are using EA with c#.
We have imported some sample classes and EA correctly found the properties and stereotyped them, however it fails to see that some are read only and generically just calls them all a property.

What's wierd is if we then re-engineer code freshly to a new file from thos objects it makes proper GET/SET properties for them (however it makes get and set even if the original was read only (get only)).

If we are to make our own classes, we have no stereotype option to select property and no where to set read only as far as I can tell.

Is this a limitation or are we missing something?

=-=-=
Update: we tried just making a stereotype called "property" and somehow EA knew to generate proper property code, so the only problem remaining is how to tell it that it's read only or write only and generate only the GET or the SET and not both every time as it does now?  

(also you can't specify the private variable so it just puts <unknown> in place of that, would be nice if that's possible at design time as well).

12

General Board / Evaluating EA, couple of questions..

« on: March 08, 2003, 03:10:23 pm »

Hello everyone, I've just been evaluating EA and somewhere on the web site under system requirements it said something along the lines of "Not tested with XP but should work".

We have to run EA on XP because we have hyperthreaded processors (not supported under other os's) and so far evaluating it I've not seen any problems whatsoever (I'm a near complete novice with UML so I admittedly probably haven't really *worked* the program in all aspects, but nothing jumped out and crashed on me so far   ).

Is that just an outdated statement about XP under system requirements or...?

I'm incredibly excited about what EA can do for us, it looks to be a damn fine product in every respect and lightbulbs are going off constantly while I try it out.

Our company has recently gone far beyond the point where we can do without a CASE tool.

I'm facing the initially steep learning curve of going from no knowledge of UML to working with it and I was wondering if anyone knows of any resources available on the net that show working with UML to design simple projects. (like walkthroughs step by step).  

Reason being that I don't learn very well without doing something practical.

Cheers to anyone who can point me in the right direction.

13

General Board / Re: Support generate script for SQL Server 2000

« on: March 08, 2003, 02:54:59 pm »

Ditto, I only saw SQL 7 in the trial of EA..any idea if that is coming / easily worked around?

14

Uml Process / Re: Looking for more indepth UML example

« on: August 07, 2003, 06:38:10 pm »

Thanx Ben

Did a search for "Zircom mentor" but nothing comes up regarding that?
Had gone through the Help within EA (program and reviewing the white papers), as well as UML Weekend Crash Course<Thomas A Pender> - but was feeling way under integillent. I was hoping for examples (software design related as opposed to the examples EA has that is 3 or four activities in total) so I could relate to what was shown to what I need to do.
Have grabbed UML Distilled Second Edition and will do that tonight.

15

Uml Process / Looking for more indepth UML example

« on: August 07, 2003, 11:53:42 am »

I'm new to all this, and trying to get around in my noggin how this process works to something I can relate to.
Unfortunately, I have found the EAexample to not really show the process of how one would utilize UML. Most examples show something really basic - such as use of a cash machine, or the partial examples relating to ordering books online.
If anyone knows of more detailed examples of UML that involves a software process so I can get a better overview of how one would utilize EA in a more advanced case, that would be appreciated.