Messages

1

Suggestions and Requests / Support for Archimate

« on: December 20, 2008, 05:42:46 am »

Maybe it already exists, but I'm looking for Enterprise Architect support for the Archimate framework.  (Try googling Enterprise Architect and Archimate -- ouch)

Since it's largely a framework that captures artifacts and taxonomy, I would think it could be supported under EA.  Has anyone tried, know of any support... is it even worth me asking?

2

Suggestions and Requests / Default Label Visibility

« on: December 14, 2004, 01:04:10 pm »

Okay, this would help me immensely because right now it drives me insane.  I am working on a data diagram, my tables are happy and my associations are there.  So I start adding my constraints and all of the labels are on by default.  So I end up turning off all but the three labels I want to see in my diagram.

It would be great if I had some form of control over the default label visibility.

Thanks.

3

Suggestions and Requests / Re: Code engineering support for WSDL, IDL

« on: November 09, 2004, 10:41:09 am »

That would be ideal, the way I'm planning on approaching this as it stands it to take the logical views, covert to XML and then parse and produce IDL.  Its not exactly my favorite way to handle such things.

4

Suggestions and Requests / Re: Code engineering support for WSDL, IDL

« on: November 08, 2004, 11:46:28 am »

Let me throw in my 2 cents as well... I'd like to see support for IDL generation from UML diagrams.

5

Suggestions and Requests / Search and replace

« on: November 15, 2004, 01:01:04 pm »

Maybe I missed this, but I don't think so.  When I'm modelling I'll run into cases where I have a class of type "Foo" that I use generously throughout my structure.  If by hook or crook the name needs to change I am often stuck with the lengthy process of updating any members or methods that use that class.  I'd really like a quick way to find all the instances of Foo and change them to Bar.

6

General Board / Re: Importing DTS jobs

« on: February 19, 2009, 09:14:13 am »

I guess I can answer this one myself.  Especially since DTS is end-of-life from Microsoft's POV.  Short answer whether its DTS or SISS is that you'll have to write a tool to extract the content and have it export XMI or write some automation to do the job for you.  Wasn't overly difficult.

7

General Board / Importing DTS jobs

« on: February 19, 2009, 04:07:05 am »

Has anyone tried or been able to import the workflow from a DTS package?  Any thoughts on how the DTS workflow could be transformed into an activity or BPM diagram?

8

General Board / Re: Creating a roadmap in EA

« on: February 19, 2009, 12:37:38 am »

Just so that I'm clear...

* You're recommending that I copy the entire diagram (different mechanism but basically done through export-import)
* You aren't aware or and/or recommending a different approach to presenting a roadmap that shows progression that utilizes some infrastructure within EA to delineate versions of a component?

Thank you.

-- Ajaxx

9

General Board / Creating a roadmap in EA

« on: February 18, 2009, 10:31:00 am »

I've often been tasked with providing a roadmap with diagrams that depict the as-is architecture and the to-be architecture.  Many times, we're also tasked with depicting the architecture as it's rolled out.  Creating these diagrams has been difficult and so I'd like to understand how others create these types of roadmaps.

Here's the way that I create mine:
* Create as-is architecture (usually a component diagram)
* Copy all items in the as-is architecture and paste new item in a new diagram
* Adjust the diagram to reflect the changes between generations

Obviously, I lose all of my linkage by doing this.  I've tried other approaches that use the same object and that's just incredibly messy.  The elements now have links all of the place and clean-up becomes a nightmare.

Any thoughts?

10

General Board / Creating a top-level view matrix

« on: February 19, 2009, 01:15:18 am »

Let me first state that I have seen what was done with the MDG - Zachman and it's impressive.  The most impressive thing with the MDG - Zachman was the first page which gave a view of all of the subviews.  I'd like to know if that is possible without the MDG technology.

I'm not using Zachman for my EA framework, I'm using the CapGemini IAF model.  While the models are similar they have some significant differences and I'm trying to understand if it's possible to generate the one page view without a specific MDG technology to back it.

11

General Board / Creating entry point for cross-sectional views

« on: February 18, 2009, 10:39:34 am »

I've reviewed many of "big" EA frameworks (Zachman, MODAF, IAF, etc) and often the framework (taxonomy) is a matrix where artifacts are collected.  But if we're honest, many times there are multiple architectures (people, process and information) in play within an organization.  In my business, there's the architecture governs our primary business, the architecture that governs our operational organization and the architecture that governs our technology organization.

When I think about it, you can slice architectural views in 2, 3 or more dimensions.  If I were to simply cut this to 3 dimensions, how difficult would it be to have EA transform the other 3 views and construct a view which is a cross section.  Here's an example:

Let's take the three environments I outlined above... if I look at each of them, they'll all have a technology view (systems).  My primary business has the systems that support it; my operations has systems that support monitoring, management and reporting; and my technology organization has systems to support building software.  But now I'd like to look at the technology view across all three of those organizations.  It seems like this would have to be a manual process unless there's a way for EA to automatically generate this.

Do I need to use automation to accomplish what I'm after?

12

General Board / Reverse Engineering C#

« on: October 24, 2007, 07:44:54 am »

I recently performed a reverse engineering operation on my C# code and found that it didn't do what I wanted it to do with my generic datastructures.  In this case, A had a member foo which was of type List<B>.  The diagram shows both A and B but was unable to show an association between A and B that would have been qualified by multiplicity.

So I went in and added an association between A and B with a 1 to * multiplicity.  Set the visibility to private and it generated a member B inside of A.  Not completely unexpected, but I'm unclear about how I can tell the forward engineering template that I would like it to use a List<T> when an unordered 1 to * multiplicity is specified.

Any thoughts on how I can make the reverse engineered diagram more useful?

13

General Board / Enteprise Repository Management

« on: January 24, 2006, 07:53:04 am »

This is general question that I'm sure some of you have faced.  My organization is transitioning from one product line to new product line.  We are designing models around the product we are building but we realize that many of the existing components will be part of the overall picture until its all transitioned.

This has resulted in our organization going through some growing pains as we use EA.

We started off by having an EAP that contained the models for a single project.  Collaboration broke down and we ended up moving to the enterprise edition of EA.

Works much better but over time more project roots got added to the repository and its turning into a management mess.  If two root projects are in the repository and each has an object model that contains objects with similar names (consider what happens when a product forks/branches) then it creates problems in our repository.  People end up trying to build new models only to find two "types" with the same name and not knowing which is which.

So now I've kicked everyone out of the main repository and have asked them to work on their own projects in EAP files again and to import their work up to the main repository only after they've finalized their designs.

I'd like to know how others have managed environments with multiple projects and overlap and how you've made EA effective in those environments.

14

General Board / Setter methods not visible from property dialog

« on: October 21, 2005, 06:51:40 am »

I just noticed something that you might want to be aware of.  Its easy enough to work around.  I am working with a model I opened a class Volume.  In it I made an attribute as follows:

m_quantity : uint

The language binding for the class is C#.  I click on the attribute and then selected the property checkbox.  It brought up a window with the following items:

Name: [ box ]
Getter: [ box ]
<blank space>
Stereotype: <Greyed>
Get Scope: [Public] Set Scope: <disabled>
Read and Write checkboxes both checked.

However, I cant get this thing to expose a public setter property.  Any idea why these would magically disappear from me?

-- Aj

15

General Board / Exposing properties through an interface

« on: October 14, 2005, 06:55:33 am »

I'm doing some class modelling for objects that will be implemented in C#.  I like to do a lot of my abstract modelling through interfaces before providing concrete classes that implement them... nothing new there.

However, I can't seem figure out how you would model a property that is exposed by an interface and realized by an implementation.

For that matter, how could I do that with a class that is marked with the interface stereotype.  It appears that properties are exposed when an attribute is marked with a property flag.

Thanks for you help.