Messages

1

General Board / RefGUID question

« on: August 24, 2012, 10:43:48 pm »

Hello,

in the EA UserGuide I find the following documentation concerning RefGUID:

Format
Type=RefGUID; Values=Type1,Type2; Stereotypes=Stereotype1;

Description
Enables the TaggedValue to reference an element from the model by specifying the element's  GUID, where:
- Type1 and Type2 specify one or more allowed diagram objects (such as Class, Component, Attribute or Operation)
- Stereotype1 represents an allowed stereotype

My questions:

1. My understanding was that Attributes and Operations do not have a GUID (and can only be connected with this "Link to Element Feature").
Is this wrong? Can I reference a special Attribute within an Element (i.e. Class) with RefGUID?

2. I found in the MDGTechnologies XML-files a "BaseStereotype=..." in addition to "Stereotypes=..."
Could you explain the difference between the two?

Thank you!

2

General Board / Tagged value not of type Memo but string

« on: August 21, 2012, 12:19:20 am »

Hello,

I want to create a MDG file with elements that have tagged values of types Memo and RefGUID.

I followed the tutorial by qwerty (http://community.sparxsystems.com/tutorials/extensibility/intro-creating-mdg-file) and everything works well except that the tagged values do not have type memo/RefGUID but are simple strings.

I included the tagged values definitions in the MDG.

I use version 9.2.921

What am I doing wrong?

Thanks for any pointers.

3

General Board / Attaching a diagram to an existing connector

« on: July 18, 2012, 11:47:22 pm »

Hello,

I wonder if it is possible to attach an element (i.e. a diagram) to an existing connector (that is already connecting two elements or two attributes respectively)?

The (simplified) use case is: I want to model the relationship between attributes of EDIFACT messages and XML formats.

I can do this by defining classes for the EDIFACT and XML and connect their attributes (Link to element feature). This works well for the simple case of a direct transformation EDIFACT -> XML. And this connection / relationship is the main information I want to model.

However, it is possible that the value of the EDIFACT message is not simply copied to the XML but a more complex process is carried out to make the transformation.

So my idea is to model the relationship between two attributes through a connection (i.e. assoziation) and attach a process diagram if necessary.

Is this possible / feasible?

Thanks a lot for any input.

4

General Board / relationships between class attributes

« on: July 12, 2012, 12:21:55 am »

Hello,

I want to model the relationships between various elements in our application with EA.

To make it simple, just assume I only want to model the relationship (aka mapping) between certain fields of an incomming EDIFACT message to our own (proprietary) XML schemata.

I have the EDIFACT message format as a xsd as well.

I know how to import xsd into EA: EA generates corresponding classes with attributes.

My question is: is it possible define relationships / assoziations between the attributes (one field in EDIFACT maps to a certain field in our xml)?

So far it seems I can only define relationships between the class elements.

Thank you!

5

General Board / Audit tagged values possible?

« on: January 06, 2012, 12:28:16 am »

Is it possible to track changes of tagged values (in this case Type=Memo) with the audit functionality?

6

General Board / conditional report template construct

« on: January 04, 2012, 03:09:23 am »

I understand the basics of report template definition and I have written the follwing template:

package >
{Pkg.Name}

element >

{Element.Name}

{Element.valueOf(Core)}

Comment
{Element.valueOf(Comment)}

< element
child packages >
< child packages

< package


My question is: how is it possible to include the "Comment" part:

Comment
{Element.valueOf(Comment)}

only if the tagged value "Comment" has a value, i.e. is not null / empty?
Is there something like a conditional / if construct?
Thank you!

7

Uml Process / Re: Tagged values as RTF

« on: December 20, 2011, 07:05:17 pm »

Thank you, it works now!
Just to point out for others again: you need to set the "name" of the attribute to the value of the "Tag name" in "Settings - UML Types - Tagged Value Types", not the "type" (as I did).

8

Uml Process / Re: Tagged values as RTF

« on: December 17, 2011, 01:49:23 am »

Thank you very much, but could you be a bit more specific?

So far when I define a profile, I define the tagged values as Attributes in the Stereotype (which I link to the metaclass through the Extension relationship). Here I can only set types like "int", "boolean", "char" etc.
How can I set the "memo" type?

9

Uml Process / Tagged values as RTF

« on: December 17, 2011, 01:26:09 am »

Is it possible to define a tagged value not just as text/char but as RTF like in the Notes box of an element?

I know how to use basic tagged values and how to define profiles. I also know that I could link external documents to an element, but I would like to have the information directly within the element.

Thank you.

10

Automation Interface, Add-Ins and Tools / Re: e-book about EA's database structure available

« on: July 09, 2012, 07:52:50 pm »

As far as I know there are three EA-books for sale right now:

Inside Enterprise Architect
Scripting Enterprise Architect
Fifty Enterprise Architect Tricks

Will these be offered as a bundle sometime?

11

Automation Interface, Add-Ins and Tools / Background information on Geert's Add-in-Framework

« on: August 01, 2012, 12:27:08 am »

I asked Geert for the main benefits of his Add-in-Framework. I share his answer here because I think it might be interesting for others as well:

I once wrote an elaborate article on a wiki about this, but unfortunately that project was cancelled, and the wiki has been taken offline.

Anyway, the short version is that I want my tools to work on an UML model, not on an EA model.
My requirements are also usually expressed in the form UML elements and not EA elements. So I made an UML abstraction layer with interfaces that represent the UML metamodel.

The EAwrappers then implement the UML interfaces.

Now my tools don't have to know how a certain UML construct is implemented in EA, they just use the UML metamodel.

One of the advantages is that I now can port my tools rather easily to another UML tool. I only need a new layer of wrappers implementing the same interfaces, and the rest stays the same. (I actually needed this in the past when migrating from Rational Rose to EA, and I was very glad I did use this kind of wrapping back then)

Another reason (which is not demonstrated in my libraries) is that at a client the modelling method usually has some kind of meta model based on standard UML.
When I'm developing tools for I client I create another layer (ClientMetaModel) wrapping the UML interfaces.
All tools created for this client will then use the ClientMetaModel wrappers to really adjust to their modelling method. That means that if a client defines rules for certain elements (say: classes with steretoype <<appInterface>> are not allowed to have attributes) in their metamodel we can implement those rules in the ClientMetaModel

I know, just written out like that it seems complicated, but I've been using this architecture for quite a few years now, and in the long run this is the most effective and robust.

If I ever find the time I'll try and re-write that article about the architecture behind the EAAddinFramework.

12

Automation Interface, Add-Ins and Tools / Re: Question on the book "Scripting EA"

« on: July 16, 2012, 05:46:25 pm »

Thanks a lot, highly appreciated!

13

Automation Interface, Add-Ins and Tools / Re: Question on the book "Scripting EA"

« on: July 14, 2012, 12:21:54 am »

Hi Thomas,

thank you for your response.

I would be grateful if you could explain the "Connection of Attributes" thing because I need it for a current project. I described some background here: http://www.sparxsystems.com/cgi-bin/yabb/YaBB.cgi?num=1342016515

Thanks a lot and best regards
Matthias

14

Automation Interface, Add-Ins and Tools / Question on the book "Scripting EA"

« on: July 12, 2012, 10:13:23 pm »

Hi Thomas,

I have two questions so far, I hope you can help me:

On page 9 I don't understand the sentence "The pointer is MiscData(0) which is the identifier of the element’s package counterpart." Could you explain a bit more?

Page 11: "Connectors always connect Elements". I just learned that I can also connect Attributes (of a class) using "Link to Element Feature", so is your statement really correct?

I wonder if it would make sense to have a dedicated thread where everyone who purchased your book can ask questions?

Best regards
Matthias

15

Automation Interface, Add-Ins and Tools / Re: Callback mechanism

« on: February 24, 2012, 11:05:29 pm »

Thanks a lot Geert.

Could you however give me some more specific pointers where I can find the "entry point", meaning the function that is called when I select an element and that does the window update? And how I define that this function is actually called?

Like I said I am really new to this.