Messages

1

Suggestions and Requests / EA and  BPEL

« on: March 01, 2007, 06:39:52 pm »

There's been some talk over the past year about EA supporting BPEL in some future version. Any word on this?

2

Suggestions and Requests / Re: Linked document also in generated HTML docs

« on: February 27, 2006, 04:51:58 pm »

I agree,
this would be a great feature...

3

General Board / Re: Showing things from other packages

« on: May 25, 2006, 01:43:04 pm »

Hi Joel,
Virtual documents are a good idea if you want to include a complete package. But what about if you only want to include a couple of elements?
Also this is a real issue when generating HTML documentation.
Bottom line, there should be an option to include/exclude linked elements on a diagram when generating RTF and HTML. Maybe should report this as a bug...
Cheers,
Mark

4

General Board / Oblects, classes, and instance classifiers

« on: October 05, 2003, 04:14:58 pm »

Hi,

does anybody know if it's possible to list or report on all objects by instance classifier? For example if I have a class called "Message", I would like to know all objects in the model classified as being a "Message".

Thanks,
Mark

5

General Board / Re: Learning Automation

« on: July 03, 2003, 01:59:54 am »

Hi Chana,

I completely agree with Phil, the only way to learn automation is to do it!

As an analyst who hadn't done any coding for quite a while I was reluctant at first. But I got hold of an opensource C# IDE, looked at the EA automation code samples, and successfully developed an automated document generator.

Keep on asking on the forum or feel free to drop me a line if you have any specific queries.

Good luck,
Mark

6

General Board / Re: How to print all documents in one operation

« on: July 24, 2003, 07:51:41 pm »

Hi Ingvar,

try right-clicking on your top-level package (project root)and selecting "Diagrams Only" to generate an RTF document with all diagrams.

You can also do this lower in the package tree by right clicking on the package, selecting "Documentation" and then "Diagrams Only".

Cheers,
Mark

7

General Board / Re: Annoying prompts

« on: July 24, 2003, 07:25:35 pm »

Hi Ingvar,

try right-clicking on your top-level package (project root)and selecting "Diagrams Only" to generate an RTF document with all diagrams.

You can also do this lower in the package tree by right clicking on the package, selecting "Documentation" and then "Diagrams Only".

Cheers,
Mark

8

General Board / Re: Report of requirements

« on: July 02, 2003, 03:15:46 pm »

Hi Jeroen,

I'm certainly interested in sharing but at the moment it's not really ready for general distribution. I've set it up to fit my specific analysis process and document standards, so need to make it a lot more general. And a bit more bullet proof...

Drop me a line if I can help further, maybe I could look at amending my program to meet your specific needs? That would be useful to me as I would get a different perspective and some insights into what works and what doesn't. Let me know.

Cheers,
Mark

9

General Board / Re: Report of requirements

« on: July 01, 2003, 03:34:31 pm »

Hi Jeroen,
I had a look at this and was surprised to find that this didn't seem to be possible through the RTF generator.

There are two types of requirements in EA - internal and external. They are held in two different tables and the EA interface combines them. Internal reqs are the ones that don't seem to appear on the EA RTF report. I can think of a few options for you (increasing order of complexity)

1. Try the HTML generator, it may meet your documentation needs.

2. Convert your internal requirements to external. I ususally put them in their own package and run the RTF generator over that. Downside is that the useful concept of internal vs. external requirements is lost.

3. Query the database directly. In our MS Access implementation, internal requirements are held in the "t_objectrequires" table (external requirements are held in the "t_object" table with an object_type of "Requirement").

4. Use the EA Automation API to write a routine to extract and reformat the requirement details into the word processing format of your choice.

Hopfully these ideas will work for you. You should probably take a backup copy of your project before trying these out.

I've used all of these and  relied heavily on the database query option - my data architecture background coming through. This wasn't good enough for my current project so I invested the time in learning to use the API automation and wrote a C# program to automatically produce a formated MS Word document.  I can produce different reports depending on my audience from the same EA model with the same look and feel. This took a while but was very successful - well worth my effort. As an example while typing this reply I received a query, produced a detailed use case report, and sent it off. It took about 3 minutes.

Regards,
Mark

10

General Board / Customising RTF and HTML output order

« on: May 22, 2003, 07:59:36 pm »

Hi,
does anyone know of a way to customise the order of sections produced in the HTML and/or RTF output? I would like to be able to put the scenario section before the associations for example.
Thanks,
Mark

11

General Board / Re: Creating professional documentation

« on: September 12, 2002, 09:03:44 pm »

Hi,
also struggling with this problem. I would like to see some easier customisation of the RTF templates available. The API option is ok but I would need a lot of time upfront to learn how to use it - maybe time to upskill in Java?
Anyway on current projects we are producing interim releases in HTML and only generating the formal documentation at key milestones. I've got a template with standard cover pages, organisation, and styles. I use the RTF generator to extract the docs and then attach the template to the generated output file. From there I manually adjust as required.
The overhead needed to create and maintain an automated approach is fairly high, an afternoon every now and again putting a formal document together is a viable alternative. That being said I would still like to see easy customisation.
Cheers,
Mark

12

General Board / Re: Heading levels in RTF documentation

« on: September 03, 2002, 04:18:07 pm »

I would also like to see nesting of packages in heading levels in RTF documents. Would it be possible to add another option to the "package + 1" style that treats nested packages as a lower level?  (I can get by without the customised heading levels although it's an excellent idea)

Package nesting in RTF docs would be a great immediate help to me.

Cheers,
Mark

13

General Board / External requirements on classes

« on: August 26, 2002, 02:59:03 pm »

Hi,
is there any way to change the default formatting of external requirements on classes?

I added some responsibilities to a class and displayed them in the "Responsibilities" compartment at the bottom of the class. Nice - got some really good comments from colleagues.
Then I changed these to external requirements. They then show at the top of the class (above the class name and stereotype), in italic, and right justified. This does not look good and makes it much more difficult to read. Also I haven't found out how to turn them off!

I like the idea of highlighting external requirements but why not leave them in the responsibilities compartment and just italise or use a different colour? The current (default?) format is unusable.

Cheers
Mark

14

General Board / Reverse engineering databases

« on: June 18, 2002, 09:06:34 pm »

Hi,
Is there any way to include associations and foreign keys when reverse engineering a SQL Server database using ODBC?
Cheers,
Mark

15

General Board / Re: Question on RTF templates

« on: June 03, 2002, 04:01:13 pm »

Hi all,
I believe that these are RTF tags as defined in the RTF standards. I'm not sure what version EA implements but I've found a reference to version 1.6 on the Microsoft site - http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/en-us/dnrtfspec/html/rtfspec.asp . A google search on RTF Specification leads to some other sites. Looks fairly complex though.
Cheers,
Mark