Messages

1

Suggestions and Requests / "InsertRelatedElements": WARNING + UNDO

« on: December 21, 2007, 01:59:33 am »

In a big component diagram I added a Note to a dependency arrow. Being within the Note context I by mistake pressed "Insert Related Elements". That has cluttered the diagram totaly, UNDO does not work, and I have no idea how to repair the diagram now.

It is incredible.

Please urgently provide
- a WARNING dialog before performing this dangerous operation, and
- an UNDO operation

Thank you in advance,
tomte

2

Suggestions and Requests / Cross-.eap IncludeExtended in Profiles

« on: December 18, 2007, 12:40:22 am »

For defining UML Profiles please enable
- to reference the stereotype
- - extending a metaclass in a given .eap
- from another .eap.

This is needed for constructing non-redundant enterprise-wide UML-Profiles. (Todays .eap-island-Profiles are virtually useless for enterprise use).

Maybe the option "IncludeExtended" should do it?

For a description of the problem and the steps taken see my post / reply to:
Re: Problems defining uml profiles
http://www.sparxsystems.com/cgi-bin/yabb/YaBB.pl?board=general;action=display;num=1144950908
my Reply #1 on: 17.12.2007 at 08:26:56

Thanks in advance,
tomte

3

Suggestions and Requests / Drill down: Transition to Activity DIAGRAM

« on: December 12, 2007, 01:53:25 am »

In my customer's company there is the need of a drill down link from a transition (in a StateMachine Diagram) to an ActivityDIAGRAM, as discussed in:
http://www.sparxsystems.com/cgi-bin/yabb/YaBB.pl?board=general;action=display;num=1197373720;start=0

Sincerely Yours, tomte

4

Suggestions and Requests / Re: generate sequence diagrams from source

« on: May 29, 2007, 08:59:26 am »

Pictures and text is nice during design phase, but it is a mess to keep it consistent while coding.

Hello Bernd,
this topic seems to be discussed periodically, e.g. in
http://www.sparxsystems.com.au/cgi-bin/yabb/YaBB.pl?board=suggestions;action=display;num=1170758957
http://www.sparxsystems.com.au/cgi-bin/yabb/YaBB.pl?board=suggestions;action=display;num=1162376357

Good luck,
tomte

5

Suggestions and Requests / Re: generate sequence diagrams from source

« on: February 13, 2007, 06:13:44 am »

Hello Bruce,

it is not intended nor needed "for ALL possible behaviours" but e.g. for detecting how some crazy collouge implemented the non-documented Service Locator etc. That also caused me to add second reply regarding the necessary pre-selection.

As you may know the good old Together 6.x Control Center / Solo has such a feature since many years. This does not mean that it is absolutely necessary in Sparx EA too, but it might be possible.

The rest might be a discussion of priorities of features, not of solvability.
tomte

6

Suggestions and Requests / Re: generate sequence diagrams from source

« on: February 07, 2007, 12:53:55 am »

P.S.: I forgot the preselection aspect.

Auto-generating Sequence diagrams from non-trivial projects would be useless if all messages / method calls of the source code would be modelled into one or more Sequence diagrams, even if one could delete the non-interesting messages afterwards.

For a Sequence diagram we are interested in a typical (or in a special) scenario of a usecase. We usually can identify some few "classes of interest" and / or "methods of interest". These we need to elect / mark. (In contrast to my former posting: We need not draw edges between these candidates. That would be design and is supported by the tool anyway. Thereby we do not need two trees, but just one).

What we can get by electing / marking some "elements of interest" would be a (maybe still huge) Sequence diagram that we can refine by erasing arrows from the diagram (not from the model).

Sorry for the confusion, had been late ...
tomte

7

Suggestions and Requests / Re: generate sequence diagrams from source

« on: February 06, 2007, 02:17:51 am »

I really appreciate that.

- offer two

• trees of package.interfaces/classes.operations
  - developer draws edges from a classifier in the left tree
   to a method in the right tree each
  - developer selects the package where to generate the
   sequence diagram to
  - developer presses "Generate Sequence Diagram"
  
  ... would be very helpfull and not too hard to implement.
  
  Thanks in advance,
  tomte

8

Suggestions and Requests / Re: Concepts of Synchronize, Generate, Export, Mer

« on: March 01, 2007, 10:04:28 am »

... and their intention [...] is to help Sparx provide a better products

Yes, and I even have four intentions:
1. Using a UML-2 tool that provides real roundtrip engineering
2. Having documentation of concepts that makes the tool usable
3. Helping Sparx to provide 1. and 2.
4. Finding criteria and reasoning to decide for this tool for this purpose and for that tool for that purpose.

I like Enterprise Architect for one-way designing and maybe one-way code generation.

EA has not been strongly advertized beeing a roundtrip tool, and EA comes with a very fair price for a design-only tool of good quality, additionally having some seldom-to-use-roundtrip features for EA tool specialists.

I think this is a general MDA limitation except for tools that follow a "the code is the model" approach.

My original criticism was the unusable documentation on Concepts of Synchronize, Generate, Export, Merge ..., and this still stands - but is solvable by the Sparxians. Would make me like EA even more ...  

tomte

9

Suggestions and Requests / Re: Concepts of Synchronize, Generate, Export, Mer

« on: February 28, 2007, 12:28:52 am »

Hello vnedelcu,

I also enjoyed Paolo's interesting and fully acceptable excurs on non-tautologic help.

The only problem is: As soon as a joke is the last post in a thread, the topic will dye.

Documentation on CONCEPTS actually is the most serious, most time-consuming matter to me.

Thank you for your reply,
tomte

10

Suggestions and Requests / Concepts need "in-order-to ..."s

« on: February 27, 2007, 10:59:08 pm »

Though triggered by another Topic: "Importing Together-6.0.1 UML-1.4 models and Java code" (http://www.sparxsystems.com.au/cgi-bin/yabb/YaBB.pl?board=suggestions;action=display;num=1162376357)

the same general communication / documentation problem flashes back again and again:

1. Sparxians, when replying in a forum, should not think in EA features but in what the user intends to do.

2. Sparx should not use cheap (students?) to write a cheap screen-shot-based pseudo-documentation, but should ask medium-experienced UML-users who are unexperienced EA-users to write down their in-order-to's / how-to's. Sparxians should just help them finding and writing down their own solutions. Finally re-edited, ok.

Discrete "do this, click that" do not document CONCEPTS. A concept may have a tool specific intro first but then concentrates on "in-order-to"s.

tomte

11

Suggestions and Requests / Re: Concepts of Synchronize, Generate, Export, Mer

« on: February 13, 2007, 10:48:44 am »

... Join the club...

One week ago I did not intend to join a club nor have jokes.

I am looking for a way to use Enterprise Architect as a tool, not as toy. So if "only" documentation is lacking, ...

tomte

12

Suggestions and Requests / Re: Concepts of Synchronize, Generate, Export, Mer

« on: February 06, 2007, 11:48:09 pm »

For giving some idea to the sparxians:

Synchronization Usecases (insted of thinking in EA features):

Reverse:
=======
- Several new Eclipse-.java-interfaces need to be imported / synchronized into EA model - how to:
- - ####?

- Several new Eclipse-.java-interface-methods need to be imported / synchronized into EA model - how to:
- - ####?

- Several altered Eclipse-.java-interfaces need to be synchronized into EA model - how to:
- - ####?

- Several altered Eclipse-.java-interface-methods need to be synchronized into EA model - how to:
- - ####?

- Several deleted Eclipse-.java-interfaces need to be synchronized "into" EA model - how to:
- - ####?

- Several deleted Eclipse-.java-interface-methods need to be synchronized "into" EA model - how to:
- - ####?

Forward:
=======
- Several new EA-interfaces need to be imported / synchronized into Eclipse-.java - how to:
- - ####?

- Several new EA-interface-methods need to be imported / synchronized into Eclipse-.java - how to:
- - ####?

- Several altered EA-interfaces need to be synchronized into Eclipse-.java - how to:
- - ####?

- Several altered EA-interface-methods need to be synchronized into Eclipse-.java - how to:
- - ####?

- Several deleted EA-interfaces need to be synchronized "into" Eclipse-.java - how to:
- - ####?

- Several deleted EA-interface-methods need to be synchronized "into" Eclipse-.java - how to:
- - ####?

Full Roundtrip:
==============
- Several changes (like those above) have been made to the Eclipse-.java-project,
 AND several changes (like those above) have been made to the EA-project concurrently - how to synchronize:
- - Impossible in bulk mode (for all changes at once or say in two steps)??
- - ####??

No screen shots please, just something like:

- OS > delete all ...?

- Eclipse > ... any? I suspect all synchronizing needs to be done within EA, not within Eclipse, right?

- EA > Project > SourceCodeEngineering > GeneratePackageSourceCode (or SynchronizePackageContents? Or ...?) > ...

Thank you in advance,
tomte (a paying EA customer ..., professional ed.)

13

Suggestions and Requests / Re: Concepts of Synchronize, Generate, Export, Mer

« on: February 06, 2007, 09:52:06 am »

Now that peter.zrnko showed me the intra-forum Search link, I found another post - from two and a half years ago:
http://www.sparxsystems.com.au/cgi-bin/yabb/YaBB.pl?board=suggestions;action=display;num=1082462482;start=0#0

The kind answer had been: "EA is under constant development, I really do suggest that you reguarly check for new releases of EA".

Maybe it is "only" a matter of documentation today? Nevertheless, Sisyphus must go on ...
tomte

14

Suggestions and Requests / Re: Concepts of Synchronize, Generate, Export, Mer

« on: February 06, 2007, 06:21:53 am »

non-tautological help

Hmmmm, What's that?
First, for the word tautology, is it a "widow woman" or is it a "female widow"?

Then, what could be a "tautological help"?   No Idea.

Then, what could be a "non-tautological help"?   No Idea.

No, I am not asking for any stupid help system at all but for some prosa telling me the semantics of all that mixed-up EA-vocabulary - and decision criteria which way to go without destroying my Eclipse&EA project(s) once more.
tomte

15

Suggestions and Requests / Concepts of Synchronize, Generate, Export, Merge,

« on: February 06, 2007, 02:49:16 am »

Documentation on Differences and Concepts of Synchronize, Generate, Export, Merge, ... is missing.

Hello,

In EA User Guide I found just one sentence telling that "Generate" will result in merging.

Dealing with both EA and Eclipse I already have polluted a huge project by incorrect synchronizations.

I checked MDG (model driven generation) plug-in for Eclipse.
Lacks in explaining the concepts as well, seems to make things even worse, unclear.

Please define the words and their results:

- "Synchronize" (in EA, not in general)
- "Generate" (overwriting?, merging?, on which rules?, ...)
- "Export"
- "Import"
- "Merge" ("The Run button runs the merge", p.63)
- "Synchronize > Reverse" "brings code out of Eclipse and puts it into the model":
- - "brings"?
- - "puts"?

I do not need lenghty screen shots of the menues provided.

I need the concepts and decision criteria which one of the menus to use.

And a clear description of the effects and possible side effects.

Thank you in advance,
tomte