Messages

1

Automation Interface, Add-Ins and Tools / Re: SetProjectConstant doesn't work

« on: June 02, 2022, 07:38:58 am »

Basically we all pay for software riddled with bugs, and the customer has to find and report obvious issues and work around them as we have no confidence in the vendor...

What makes this particularly ironic its software use by architects such as myself who avoid vendors like this like the plague in the work we use this software for!

As for not reporting the bug, it's not just this one bug right, nearly everything I touch has some issue, quirk, side effect or work around, there is a distinctive smell that I suspect most here know well enough from being in the software industry for a long time.

2

Automation Interface, Add-Ins and Tools / SetProjectConstant doesn't work

« on: June 02, 2022, 01:07:58 am »

Essentially DocumentGenerator.SetProjectConstant() doesn't work and appears to have been broken for many years.
If I'm wrong please advise how to use it so it actually works, rather than me trying to second guess.

If I'm right, why has this not been resolved, seems a fairly basic software bug and raises a lot of concerns about the maintenance of this product?

3

General Board / Re: Archimate instance of class

« on: May 10, 2022, 12:06:04 am »

Thanks Paolo, trying to absorb

Does anyone know how to enable overriding the ability to create instances, tried a few things out in my profile with no joy?
Specifically how to redefine a stereotype so that an instance can be made?   

4

General Board / Re: Archimate instance of class

« on: May 09, 2022, 06:43:36 pm »

Using generalization kinda works, however, issue then is what to name the specialization, having to re-assign a stereotype if you want it presented as the Archimate type (in this case a Business Role), and some complexity around querying (now need to find all specialization of the Class I want).

I'm not sure what you mean by Archimate being featureless, I come at the definition of Class more from an RDF perspective, which may be a better way to have modelled Archimate, instead of via UML and all the OO baggage, which I don't see as being particularly relevant from an end user modelling enterprise architecture, or maybe thats just me!

I think looking at page 30 here https://sparxsystems.com/resources/user-guides/modeling/mdg-technologies.pdf
and from a comment in the previously linked discussion, that it might be possible to extend archimate to support instances. While not part of the standard, I suspect the standard has gone down a cul-de-sac, with some of its design choices.

5

General Board / Archimate instance of class

« on: May 09, 2022, 09:57:42 am »

There was a rather rambling debate some time ago on this subject https://sparxsystems.com/forums/smf/index.php/topic,43276.90.html

I was wondering if any sensible pattern has emerged since (I suspect its a deficiency in Archimate itself, but I'm no expert)?

A simple example is I have Business Role of 'Data Owner', which makes sense as a class, however, I obviously have many instances of this role.  Without some means of differentiating the instance from the class I'm left only being able to model a generic patterns of the 'Data Owner' class, and not any of the domains of my business without the model becoming nonsensical i.e.  the single 'Data Owner' object would have relationships to all 'Business Actors' and 'Data Objects', we wouldn't be able to tell whom is linked to what.

6

General Board / Re: document all diagrams from search

« on: May 05, 2022, 04:39:18 am »

In this case I'm looking for all diagrams that reference elements (Archimate Business Object) that have certain attributes.

A script looks like the way to go, seems a lot simpler for me to reason about, too much magic going on via UI and slow to iterate, I'm sure I'll find some more gotchas though!

7

General Board / Re: document all diagrams from search

« on: May 04, 2022, 11:32:26 pm »

So I guess then I can't do it then!

As a package may have many diagrams, some of which are not necessarily in the set I actually want.
I don't see why diagrams aren't first class seeing as so much is driven by them in EA, feels inconsistent.

I'm increasingly wondering if scripting is the only realistic way of generating a report of any 'complexity' (or anything that doesn't violate the ad-hoc constraints of EA).  Although I suspect the API's might not support this either, perhaps some shenanigans with creating a temporary package, linking each diagram from my query to it, then rendering, then removing temp package from model.

8

General Board / document all diagrams from search

« on: May 04, 2022, 08:51:52 pm »

I have a need to search for a collection of diagram and then render them in my document, and I'm struggling to make this work.

I'm using a  Virtual document, thus I have a Model document that references a Model Search (simplified example):

SELECT ea_guid AS CLASSGUID, Diagram_Type AS CLASSTYPE, 't_diagram' as CLASSTABLE, Name FROM t_diagram

The model Document then references a Template:
package>
  diagram >
  < diagram
  element >
  < element
< package

This doesn't work.
I'm not sure if this is even possible, or if a different approach is needed.

Finding the whole document generation extremely brittle and frustrating!

Any suggestions?

9

General Board / Re: EA 6.0 First Impressions

« on: May 19, 2006, 09:53:02 am »

C code would be extremely useful to me and many other developers I know....hint hint

10

Automation Interface, Add-Ins and Tools / Re: Beta code template for Ruby

« on: May 19, 2006, 10:05:29 am »

I'm currently devloping in C and Ruby, neither of which are supported by EA.  

Your templates sound interesting but I don't seem to be able to access them, can they be made on this site if possible?

thanks,
Jim.