Messages

1

Bugs and Issues / Re: EA12 with Oracle repository is very slow

« on: November 17, 2016, 12:25:18 am »

Many thanks for your reply Greet.

I have had the same response from many users and luckily we are at the beginning of setting up the repository so we can change the database.

Am I right in thinking that there are no other functional limitations to Sparx whether we use MySQL, Oracle or SQL Server other than the performance issue discussed in this thread?

2

Bugs and Issues / Re: EA12 with Oracle repository is very slow

« on: November 16, 2016, 01:22:40 am »

Hi onlyonce

How much difference did the tuning scripts in the GitHub make?

I am using Oracle as the base repository across our local network and the latency is quite bad. It takes about 2 minutes to open the repository project and then another couple of minutes to open each diagram. If I run any queries in SQLPLUS on my machine, the response is very fast. If however I connect via Sparx using the OLE DB driver from the same machine, the response is very slow. Sparx performance was fine till we doubled the landscape diagrams we had. We currently have 260 Application Components, 370 Data flows and each application component/data flow has 25 tagged values. I don't know how this compares with other landscape repositories but to me it doesn't seem that big.

In GitHub you have identified the scripts below:

t_attribute_tuning.sql
t_connector_tuning.sql
t_diagramobjects_tuning.sql
t_object_tuning.sql
t_operation_tuning.sql
t_operationparams_tuning.sql

 ... and

trg_tuning_ea_afterlogon.sql

Do you suggest I try running all of them and see what the result is like or try one at a time?

If anyone else has any advice, please do share with me as I need to make this repository available to our Data Architects fairly soon.

Many thanks in advance.

3

General Board / Re: Adding a link in the generated HTML using the API

« on: August 27, 2016, 12:27:25 am »

In Html, its simply adding the following line in a htm file where clicking on "Email Mickey" will pop up a new email with the to field populated with Mickeys address.

<a href="mailto:[email protected]"><strong>Email Mickey</strong></a>

Not sure how to add this as a link in Sparx manually to a diagram either.

Thanks

4

General Board / Adding a link in the generated HTML using the API

« on: August 26, 2016, 11:45:50 pm »

Hi Team EA

I generate quite a lot of component diagrams using the Sparx API by importing all the data from existing Excel spreadsheets into a project. I then save the project as a HTML report. This works fine and I can see all the diagrams in my browser. Next I want each generated HTML diagram to have a clickable link which pops up a new email with some pre-filled parts. This is so people viewing each diagram can send our team feedback on each diagram. This is quite easy to do in HTML but I don't want to edit the HTML in each diagram. How can I add the link using the Visual Basic API when creating the diagrams?

Many thanks in advance.

5

General Board / Re: Auto layout Diagram from Visual Basic

« on: August 26, 2016, 11:12:56 pm »

Hi everyone

I've been away so didn't get a chance to say thanks for your time.

Paolo and Qwerty/McMannus, are we all talking about the same thing as there seems to be a conflict of views. When I generate a diagram from the API, all the components are bunched together on the top left hand side of a diagram. This is be cause I have not positioned the components when adding them to the diagram. I then click "Layout Diagram" which gives me the list (Circle, Ellipse, Box, Per Page, Diagraph ....). I select Circle so all the components appear in a circle with the connectors showing my flows. It is this selection of the diagram circle property I want to be able to set from the API.

Thanks again for your inputs.

6

General Board / Auto layout Diagram from Visual Basic

« on: August 23, 2016, 09:02:52 pm »

Hi team EA

I have created about 70 component diagrams using VB scripting. After I have created the diagrams, I need the diagrams to show the components in a circle. This I can do by manually clicking on the "layout Diagram" and selecting the circle option for each diagram (Actually its not that simple as  this sometimes leaves elements hidden behind each other so I have to EDIT->Select All followed by a right click on the diagram and select Space Evenly -> Across. Then I select the Circle option and I get all the elements in a circle without any hidden ones).

My question is how do I do the circle diagram layout automatically as I don't want to go through each of the 70 diagrams manually.

Many thanks in advance.

7

General Board / Re: Place HTML Report Diagram on Sharepoint

« on: August 12, 2016, 12:01:15 am »

Many thanks Greet. That script looks very useful as that the next part of my project. I want t o publish stuff every night as our Data Analysts will be updating the models during the day.

Having loaded the HTML, it seems a bit slow. I don't know if other people have found this to be the case.

By the way Greet I also owe you a drink for pointing me to your VB code which loads Excel based data into Sparx. I managed to modify it to generate about 70 Data landscape diagrams automatically, each containing many tags, connectors and attributes. A big big thanks!!!

8

General Board / Re: Place HTML Report Diagram on Sharepoint

« on: August 11, 2016, 09:28:16 am »

Really appreciate the quick reply Glassboy. Im new to Sharepoint so when it tells me the max number of files I can upload at anytime is 100 - is that something that can be changed by Admin? Is this what you mean or are you referring to the max number of files that a library can hold needs to be changed? I have Admin access for our Sharepoint site. Is that sufficient?

Apologies for the basic questions but I am no expert on Sharepoint

9

General Board / Place HTML Report Diagram on Sharepoint

« on: August 11, 2016, 06:28:14 am »

Hi Gang

I've created a Data Landscape Diagram (eventually) in Sparx EA 12.1 and have generated an HTML report/diagram using the Sparx functionality. The HTML Diagram can be viewed using Internet Explorer and allows me to click on components which give additional information such as Notes, Tags and Connector details. That is great but the final goal is to move the diagram to a SharePoint (2010) site. This is so other people in the organisation (who don't have Sparx) can view and click the diagram to explore our application/data landscape.

My question is, does anyone know how to do this. I appreciate its not a Sparx question as such but more of a Share Point one. I am hoping someone may have successfully done this and can save me some time. The other thing I've noticed is Sparx seems to create hundreds and hundreds of files which are a right pain to upload into Share Point 2010.

Any help will really be appreciated as always. Thanks.

10

General Board / Re: Using Office MDF extension

« on: July 25, 2016, 02:08:53 am »

Ok I manged to get everything working except number 6. Does anyone have an example in VB of this please? I simply have a connector and want to add a conveyed item to it. I think its been a long day and my brain has over heated!

Thanks in advance.

11

General Board / Re: Using Office MDF extension

« on: July 24, 2016, 12:00:40 pm »

Hi again Greet and community

I have finally decided to take your advice Greet  and try and modify your code to import my model from Excel. I initially used the MDG Excel extension but found its functionality limiting. I was told by Sparx support that the features I need will be available in future releases.

Changing the code will be quite challenging for me as I am new to Sparx EA, Data Modelling and VB!!! Any guidance will be really appreciated.

The following will be the modifications I will need to make to your code so some pointers about what to change will really help.

1. Add extra columns to the 'ElementsAndAttributes' such as 'Alias'.
2. Allow NEW tagged values to be imported for Component type elements.
3. Allow the connector of type information flow to be created.
4. Create relationship between two Elements using the created connector by specifying source/target.
5. Load properties of a connector
6. Add 'Information Items Conveyed' to the connector.

Any help will really be appreciated on this Greet.

I wont be offended if anyone else who has done anything similar chips in

12

General Board / Re: Using Office MDF extension

« on: July 01, 2016, 03:20:03 am »

Many thanks Greet. It looks like a neat piece of work.
I think I would struggle with learning VBA in the short time frame I have to get this implemented.
Thanks again.

13

General Board / Using Office MDF extension

« on: July 01, 2016, 01:02:33 am »

Hi team

I am trying to load a data model from an excel spreadsheet using the MS MDF Office extension. I've had a reasonable amount of success loading a bunch of application components and their tagged values from a spreadsheet. I've even got the Diagram to generate automatically showing the components including the hierarchy of nested components.

What I'm struggling with is how to create information flow links automatically between the components using a spreadsheet. The spreadsheet format can be quite flexible as I am writing the application to generate it. Has anyone done this before or know what to do? When I try to create the information flow in the profile, there seems to be no way of connecting the source and destination systems.

The reason I want to do this is because we have information about our applications in spreadsheets and we have over a hundred systems. Any automation to capture the application components and the information flow between them to create the application landscape diagram will save me a lot of time.

14

General Board / Re: Information Architecture repository

« on: June 03, 2016, 08:00:46 pm »

Many thanks Glassboy. This information has been very valuable to me. I think the Component diagram will be better suited to what I am doing as you advise. Lets see how it goes!

15

General Board / Re: Information Architecture repository

« on: June 01, 2016, 06:21:42 pm »

That was very usefull Glassboy. Thanks for taking the time to write in such detail.

I know understand where you are coming from and misunderstood your last two questions. So the real answer is we don't have any schemas or classes defined relating to documenting applications and data flows in the enterprise. So I guess the first task must be to do exactly that. I dont know if there are any standard EA application models I can leverage as you have suggested there are Data Model present which can be used.

Relating to Data Types, I didn't mean it in the coding sense as we as simply documenting the as-is application landscape and the information flows. Perhaps types of "information flow" is the right term. We want to be able to describe the information between any two existing applications. For example a type may be "time series data". The details would then document what it is composed of. We will also have sub-types (sub-classes?) of time-series data.

If we have a main class which describes an application structure, to create all the applications that are in the estate, would we instantiate that class into an objects for each application we have? Thats the only way I can see we would be able to document each application.

Thanks again for your help. In fact I am really impressed at the community spirit on the forum. There are some people here who have taken a great deal of personal time in helping others.