Messages

1

General Board / Re: Hyperlinks do not update in linked document

« on: November 19, 2020, 09:30:47 pm »

Hi mse,

I am not sure, but I think this is unfortunately not possible.

If you change the name of an object, the link remains still working, because it is built based on the element's GUID, which is constant, even if you change the element name, place or attributes.

Keep in mind, that the linked document is just a normal RTF file, and it is not a type of "active" object.

Hope, it helps to you!

Regards,
Gergely

2

General Board / Re: Can you import a CSV file as a relationship matrix?

« on: November 19, 2020, 09:24:13 pm »

Hi mse,

No, it is definitly not possible.

The relationship matrix is about showing the existing connections between model objects, extended with some create/modify capabilities. It is a "real time" feature: it shows always the current state of the model, and whenever you save the matrix, you save just the definition of it, not including it's content or picure.

So importing data from any external source, and showing them in the form of a relationship matrix is not possible, and it does make no sense.

Hope, I could help.

Regards,
Gergely

3

General Board / Re: Migration Repository

« on: November 12, 2020, 07:47:03 pm »

Hi,

Should I create an empty database on the target instance and do a repository transfer?

Definitely yes.

Will there be a compatibility issue if I upgrade from 2008 to 2014 SQL Server Instance?

No, if you are using the most current database stucture in your 2008 DB , you do not need to calculate with any comptibility issue.

Regards,
Gergely

4

General Board / Re: Which type of export to use for distributed development with non-UML tools?

« on: October 02, 2020, 11:43:31 pm »

Hi!

I had an interesting adventure a few years ago that is similar to this one. At the time, we had a comprehensive UML / EA model. This had to be complemented by the structures and processes of a system built with its own (non-UML) graphical design tool. (Imagine a graphical process automation tool)

This had to be done repeatedly as the system was continuously developed and expanded.

Our solution was to build an intermediate meta database. We loaded the elements from the non-UML modeling tool here, and here we linked the GUIDs used in the EA model and the identifiers used in the non-UML tool.

Finally, we generated a simple structured XMI from the meta database to update the EA model.

Important: this work cost many times more than buying a few EA licenses for an external developer. In this case, we had no choice, but if you have a choice, you better buy a few EA licenses for the other party. It will be much cheaper than solving the problem of model integration. Seriously!

Cheers,
Gergely

5

General Board / License server usage statistics

« on: September 24, 2020, 05:58:27 pm »

Hi All,

I have some questions about EA's License Server product.

Our company has a stack of EA Floating Licenses. We have to make a decision in the next few weeks about we will or will not increasing our license stack. For making the decision we need to know, how looks our licence usage: average usage, top usage, etc.

Question is, how can we configure EA license server for logging out the license events (obtain and release), in order to make same statistics?

Note, that the license server log directory is at the moment all empty.

Or is there any other way we don't know to get the statistics?

Thanks in advance for your answer, and best regards,
Gergely

6

General Board / Re: How to automate Data model view creation

« on: September 23, 2020, 07:54:03 pm »

I’m sorry, but I don’t think your question is elaborated enough to get an answer on this forum.

What kind of view do you want to create? DB view? Or an EA view? Or a UML diagram? What information source do you want to work from? Is it a database re-engineering task or model transformation task (ore some other)?

If you clarify what the task exactly is, you are more chance to get an answer  

Cheers,
Gergely

7

General Board / Re: How to set default Owner for tables for Transformations from domain model

« on: September 23, 2020, 07:43:45 pm »

1)  How do I set a default value for the Owner value in created database tables?  E.g., in the properties for the database table, choose Table Detail tab, and see the Owner field.  I want the default Owner for all tables to be "dbo".

Try to set the values of  the tags "Owner" and "Tablespace" of the generated table object. You can do it manually in the generated model, or by modifying the transformation template.

2)  How do I change the Transform template scripts so that, in the generated database table, the PK column will be first, followed by any FK columns, lastly followed by the columns created from the attributes of the source class?  I tried editing the Class script to move the Primary Key code before the line with %list="Attribute" @separator="\n" @indent="  "%, but it had no effect.

The order of how the transformation script generates the single columns of a table into the target model, you are not able to control, I think.
Maybe it is possible to control how the code generator generates DDL file from the DDL model. In XSD model it is possible to set "position" tag for every field of an XSD class, and the generator takes it into consideration during generating XSD file. But I am not sure if it works with DDL scripts too.

G.

8

General Board / Re: How to set default Owner for tables for Transformations from domain model

« on: September 23, 2020, 07:26:07 pm »

Problem 1:  EA is creating the two columns in the StudentCourse cross-reference table with "not null" set to false; but "not null" should be true for both columns in the StudentCourse cross-reference table.  You will only create a record in this cross-reference table when you are linking a Student to a Course, so both columns should be mandatory.  See settings for connection between the domain classes below.

I think, this is just a small inconsistency in the default transformation templates of EA. In my opinion the default transformation templates of EA aren't some kind of ultimate solution, these are just good starting point for creating your own customized  templates. This is true for DDL transformation, and also for other transformation types (XSD, WSDL, etc). So, if you want have more accurancy, you have to modify the templates...

Problem
Problem 2:  EA is not adding a Primary Key to this StudentCourse cross-reference database table.  The PK should be the two columns.  See settings for connection between the domain classes below.
(...)
Allow Duplicates:  False  (if this was true, then I would understand Problem 2 above)

See my previous paragraph. I don't think EA's default DDL transformation is using this attribute ("allow duplicates") for anything.

Regards,
Gergely

9

General Board / Re: XSD to DDL issue

« on: September 14, 2020, 10:31:38 pm »

Hello hender,

Transform an XSD into a DDL model is unfortunately not a trivial thing. There are a lot of quite hard modeling issues, you have to solve before this transformation.

The base problem is, that XSD and relational have two different approach of data modeling. If you have a general, platform independent logical datamodel (e.g. class model), then you are able to generate an XSD model and also a table model from it; but the two models will have some fundamental differences. For example:  in XSD you are not able to use two directional connectors because the navigation will always move from the parent to the child; you need decide, which direction you want to have in XSD. And more: in XSD you are not able to model n:m relations! There are some more differences, I won't detail them now.

Actually, as you generate an XSD (or even a relational) model from the platform independent logical data model (PIM), you make the model impoverished. The platform specific model will always have less information in it, as the PIM have! As XSD model and relational model are specific to two different platforms, it is not possible to derive one from the other!

If you have only an XSD specific model, you have first enrich the model and compose a general logical view, and after that you can generate a platform specific model for the relational platform. It is  unfortunatelly quite difficult. Of course, there are some tools, that can make this steps (for example XMLSpy from Altova), but the relational model generated this way will never be ideal for programmer's work... It is just for storing the XML data in relational DB.

QUESTION: Why don't you use the XML DB functionality of Oracle? In this case you do not need to generate relational model, and Java (or other) classes can easily be generated from the XSD.

Hope, this helps!

Regards,
Gergely

10

General Board / Re: How do you create a structured (complex) tagged value?

« on: September 09, 2020, 02:35:48 am »

Hi mse,

If the structure of the data you want to store in the tagged value is not very complex, you can try to define a Custom Masked Tagged Value Type as described here:
https://sparxsystems.com/enterprise_architect_user_guide/15.1/modeling/creatingacustomtaggedvalue.html

regards,
gergely

11

General Board / Re: Howto Link a Digram in EA

« on: September 08, 2020, 12:56:29 am »

Hello Milanhio,

make an HTML export of your model, host the HTML package on any HTTP server, and refer these HTML pages from your external system.

I know, viewing the html is not the same experience as opening diagram in the desktop application, but imo it is good enough for serving information to the stakeholders. 

Regards,
Gergely

12

General Board / Re: Model View tool bar missing

« on: August 13, 2020, 06:01:10 pm »

According to the documentation, access the Model View toolbar as follows:

Ribbon: Show > Portals > Window > Explore > Model Views > Toolbar
             or
            Start > Explore > Browse > Model Views > Toolbar

Keyboard Shortcuts: Ctrl+Shift+F5  > Toolbar

13

General Board / Re: How do you get something to show up in the Roles field of a Connector element?

« on: August 11, 2020, 11:21:28 pm »

Unfortunately I am not able to upload a picture, but please believe me: if you connect two tables (with association), the role combo boxes will be filled up with the existing columns of the both tables. 

G.

14

General Board / Re: How do you get something to show up in the Roles field of a Connector element?

« on: August 11, 2020, 11:16:47 pm »

Actually, it depends on what type of elements do you want to connect with eachother.

When linking classes (object-oriented thinking), you do not need to fill this combo box because in class diagrams, the relationship points from class to class and the "child class" will be a separate data member in the "parent class." The role specifies the name of this data member - this is a name you specify, not the name of any existing data member.

In contrast, when joining tables (relational thinking), the connection points from field to field (FK to PK), so it makes a lot of sense to populate this box (I try to attach a picture).

Bests,
Gergely

15

General Board / Re: EA. generated XSD file without operation

« on: August 11, 2020, 04:47:54 pm »

It's a really hard topic. In my experience no generated diagram can be expressive enough for human understanding. (The exception can be some very simple diagrams, of course, but I assume you have ones from the more complicated type.)

I have only two tipps:
1. try out the standard XSD import, and look at the generated diagram, if they are suitable for you.
2. generate a very simple diagram into XMI with all defaults, and afterwards  try out EA's diagram layouting tools.

// Generally, I find to be better the forward progress in modeling: first I construct the model and the illustrating diagram in the planning / elaboration phase, and the code is generated from the model - not backwards But i know, this argument will here not help you  

Maybe there are some more sophistycated tools for this thing, but I have no expereience with that.   

G.