Messages

1

General Board / Re: Trying to establish a data model for a simple table - but can't make progress.

« on: January 21, 2025, 03:33:41 am »

OK - thanks for the response/info!!

2

General Board / Re: CSV Import Error

« on: January 16, 2025, 07:51:56 am »

Rather than an open-text field - where the user can type an infinite number of wrong entries - why not a drop-down?

3

General Board / Trying to establish a data model for a simple table - but can't make progress.

« on: January 16, 2025, 07:04:06 am »

I have a very simple table of data - Item_name_short, Item_name_long, System, Org, and Type.
It doesn't get much simpler!
I'm using this as a simple test to try pulling this structure in from external (Excel, CSV, I don't care...  Access import won't work either...).

If you want some info on what I've tried:
I tried creating a DataModel, but the "Tables" entry wouldn't let me create a new table.
I then discovered I must use the "Database Builder" - so did that - and created a table, with the fields. (The new table then showed up under the DataModel "Tables" folder - where it would not let me create the table???)
I then realized that I really don't want to start by telling EA about this, I want to import all of this info from a file.
So I abandoned that and tried to find help on importing. Interestingly (based on a tutorial video I found), to do an import - one must go to the 'Publish' option. I never would have found that without the demo video I found.

If you only want to know my question:
Can someone explain exactly how to import data, with my own custom fields, into EA - and have it do its magic on representing the table?
I thought I could point it at an Excel file (properly formatted) and it would figure this out. Apparently not.

Apparently, it involves creating/exporting an import spec - which is cool, but that import spec does NOT allow me to specify which of MY fields to bring in (?) - so I'm lost immediately. It seems there is some other .csv file also generated - which then is used to perform the import?

I am totally lost.
I would very much appreciate a link to some kind of document or tutorial that actually explains how to do this - and what is in each file that is needed etc.

thanks!

4

Bugs and Issues / Re: Import Database not working.

« on: June 18, 2024, 12:28:12 am »

Thanks for the quick reply!

Regarding connecting:  OK - cool - makes sense to stick with ODBC in general... :-)
Can you elaborate on the driver? Like - I'm wondering why either of my existing Access drivers/options in Windows (10) would not work. Since they are likely current, I'm not sure what I would look for and whether it would just say that I have the latest etc.

Regarding the XSD, I think the problems I'm facing have to do with subtleties on how the XSD I'm analyzing is designed. In particular, it makes very heavy use of types to define most of the elements and how they relate, and the resulting actual structure can only be understood by navigating the linkage of the types. There is very little physical structuring and relating of elements going on within the XSD.

I found that using one option during import created many thousands of interconnecting lines, with each element pretty much appearing with no related elements within it - which in this case is technically correct, but also results in an unreadable/unusable diagram.  The other option seemed to include the first level of child elements within a given element, but, it did not connect these child elements to *their* children. So, now I have a diagram with too FEW lines. I then kind of gave up on the viability of using a diagram for this XSD, and was hoping to find a way to generate a hierarchical type of tree view of the element relationships, and have not found a way to do that either. (I've actually rolled my own XSD reader/processor to achieve that - but I really want to do all of this in EA now!)

5

Bugs and Issues / Import Database not working.

« on: June 17, 2024, 11:36:43 pm »

Hi - I'm a returning EA user, and have fond memories of it in my previous life. I'm trying to use it to do some data modeling.

At this point, I'm trying to import a very simple (one-table MS Access) database, just to get my feet wet with EA. (EA v16.1, MS Office/Access 365) and I'm immediately faced with an error (I would attach here, but I see no such button/capability.)

I'm puzzled by a few things:
> This is a very simple Access Database import - how could there possibly be challenges with something as mundane as that?
> It is reporting an ODBC error even though I used the "MS Access file based database" option in EA rather than the "ODBC based database" option.
> If I try the ODBC option instead, it says "Schemas are not supported" and will not import anything.

I had a heck of a time trying to wade through the floating license maze. I was able to import some XSD, but can't get the diagram to present the design as needed (even after having tried both options on import). I was hoping to generate UML from the XSD, but I've not yet been able to generate such a UML diagram. I backed off of the XSD/XML and figured I'd start with a simple database, and now I can't even do that. So far, I'm feeling pretty silly as I'm batting a big goose egg with EA.

I did search the forum and found one case where they said they installed a particular driver, but no information was provided on what driver, from where, what version, etc.

Would definitely appreciate some help here - especially with MS Access. I have many such databases and really need to do some data modeling, based on those structures, and one of the major benefits in purchasing EA was to NOT do this by hand!