Messages

1

Suggestions and Requests / Re: DocBook support in Enterprise Architect

« on: November 24, 2004, 02:22:36 pm »

But if it's that easy to produce a new XML format for the output from EA, shouldn't it be relatively straightforward to produce WordML or the XML forms used by OpenOffice/KOffice?

2

Suggestions and Requests / Re: EA for Apple Mac (OS X + Core Duo)

« on: August 01, 2006, 08:22:43 am »

Codeweavers is working on a version of Crossover Office for the Mac. That might be preferable to Parallels--I just went to a Macbook myself and I'm strangely reluctant to put Windows on it.  

3

Suggestions and Requests / Change Log

« on: November 25, 2004, 07:35:49 am »

Here's something that would make my life a lot easier.

A changelog.

What I want is a report I can generate, for a package or project, that picks up all of the element changes I have recorded (even just the manually inputted ones), and lists them in a single table so I can hand it to people and tell them where to find the alterations.

Currently, I can document the changes but you still have to read through the document to find them. And developers are lazy people who want a list up at the front of the document.

4

Suggestions and Requests / Re: What's Microsoft Visio ?

« on: November 17, 2004, 11:23:20 am »

Also it's more expensive than EA and you can't generate documentation from it, although you can in theory add full documentation to the diagrams.

5

Suggestions and Requests / Re: Just a little thing: State Machine diagram in

« on: October 24, 2004, 08:59:19 am »

Also, clicking on the little arrows at the side of the toolbars in the toolkit scrolls up and down through the elements.

I had to have that one pointed out to me too.  

6

Suggestions and Requests / Re: Textual Analysis and UI Improvements

« on: October 14, 2004, 01:17:07 pm »

I mostly use EA as a requirements management tool, so there's a number of things I would like to see it do better.

I'd like to have the ability to create a requirement matrix that lets me document in the model how various elements impact one another, and check it if things change. I also want to be able to trace a requirement from a feature list, to a use case, to a class model, to a test case. EA sort of does this but the current implementation is awkward and only really handles parts of this cleanly.

The ability to easily generate a report that shows me what has changed since a certain version or date and list both the change and the reason for it. The change documentation should be robust but not onerous--meaning make it easy to access when I update the diagram but don't force it on me every time. Ideally, I'd like to be able to compare "versions" and have it tell me what changed, and let me decide if it needs to be called attention to.

Again, EA is halfway there. I can document changes but it's a little awkward to get to, and the report tools don't make it easy to limit to just the changed elements. I can get the info I want, but it's hard to get JUST a list of the changed information to give the developers.

The ability to generate a testing matrix from the requirements and document test cases using the matrix. EA has some support for testing (more than most) but it's relatively unsophisticated. This is probably the least important matter of all the stuff I've brought up.

I'd be happy to specify these more precisely if there's a chance of them being implemented.  

7

Suggestions and Requests / Re: Textual Analysis and UI Improvements

« on: October 11, 2004, 08:41:42 pm »

Thomas,

That's pretty much what I've been doing. It works well enough, but I see no reason not to push for improvements if there's a chance of getting them.  

For me, these kind of things are the difference between EA being a good product and a great one.

8

Suggestions and Requests / Re: Textual Analysis and UI Improvements

« on: October 08, 2004, 12:43:25 pm »

I've come across a very nice program for managing use cases: Case Complete at http://www.serliosoft.com. It only handles use cases and is far more expensive than EA, but it has a wonderful UI for use case and actor capturing.

If EA could handle use case text like this does I would never need another tool--heck, not even Word. Right now, the handling of this in EA is somewhat clunky, as it's just an extension of the class diagrams.

Another very good application for use cases is Use Case Studio, from http://www.rewrittensoftware.com/.

Having these kinds of capabilities in EA, or the capability to integrate them, would be very useful to me.

9

Suggestions and Requests / Textual Analysis and UI Improvements

« on: September 24, 2004, 12:20:32 pm »

I was looking at a similar product, Visual Paradigm. They have a couple of really nice features for someone, like me, who works primarily at the requirements end of system development.

Their support for textual analysis (see http://www.visual-paradigm.com/textualanalysis/index.html) is something I would very much like to see emulated in EA. They also have a better UI for documenting use cases, as it's specialized for requirements capture.

They have a couple of other nice UI features as well. Selecting an diagram element brings up tools that let you pick all of the things that could validly connect to it (ArgoUML does this too).  

On the whole, I'm sticking with EA, because it has three major benefits over Visual Paradigm--support for UML 2.0, the ability to generate .rtf files, and the ability to model the program UI. But the features I mentioned above are a pretty big deal to me and I'd love to see something similar in EA.

10

Suggestions and Requests / Scenario Status

« on: October 14, 2004, 02:40:30 pm »

It would be helpful to be able to flag a scenario within a use case with a status, instead of just the use case as a whole. Frequently particular scenarios are deferred to later releases, or cut to save time, and it would be nice to be able to track them.

11

General Board / Re: Business Process Modelling & Simulation

« on: April 21, 2006, 08:16:36 am »

It does not, and I am not aware of any add-ons that would allow it to do this.

12

General Board / Re: Relationship Matrix

« on: March 01, 2006, 12:09:11 pm »

Or do you mean a way of showing that Requrement A contradicts Requirement B?

13

General Board / Re: software development process

« on: October 28, 2005, 06:47:29 am »

This looks like it would be a useful reference for you, and it includes a process. Catalysis also has supposedly been successfully user for real-time applications.

(Note: I have no direct experience in this field, so can't endorse either).

14

General Board / Re: Good vs Bad Software

« on: September 02, 2005, 11:25:25 am »

I'm not sure what you mean by a "management motive".

At a guess, I assume that you're talking about software that is designed with the intent of restricting how users can perform their work. Applications like this often remove shortcuts that existed in earlier versions of the system or business process and force users to make sure that all the proper steps in the business process are followed all the time, even at times when they're overloaded with other tasks?

15

General Board / Re: N-Ary Associations and Association Class

« on: June 27, 2005, 07:52:06 pm »

Yes, it does. Yes, I can see why you want to do that. No, I can't find a way to do it either short of deleting the original and creating a new one.  :-/