Messages

1

Suggestions and Requests / Re: Creating responsibility diagrams

« on: December 18, 2006, 12:44:01 am »

If you use activity partitions instead of swimlanes then Ctrl+U does find the classifiers. Custom searches can find activity partitions too. I would recommend you use activity partitions instead of swimlanes.

Hi Neil,

Yes, Ctrl-U works with ActivityPartitions.

Now I'm looking for a way to create those responsibility diagrams as described earlier in this thread.
But unfortunately I see no model-level relationship or support in the tool to graphically display the usages of an element in diagrams.
That would be a very useful feature to add to EA, wouldn't it ?

In this case in order to document our internal processes, I want to produce a diagram for each role (actor) to indicate where he's involved in the processes.  I wish I could use the existing "Insert related elements..." menu item to add the diagrams in which the element appears (including as an ActivityPartition or swimlane).

Could that be registered as a feature request please?

Denis

2

Suggestions and Requests / Re: Creating responsibility diagrams

« on: December 15, 2006, 07:40:21 am »

Hi Thomas,

Unfortunately step 2 is not working.

If you define a swimlane in an Activity diagram for instance and the Classifier refers to an Actor,  Ctrl-U on that actor does not show the usage in your activity diagram...

Can we enter that as a Bug ?

Denis

3

Suggestions and Requests / Re: Creating responsibility diagrams

« on: December 15, 2006, 06:10:13 am »

Well I'm afraid this discussion is drifting away from my actual need.  Sorry if I didn't state my problem very precisely.  In fact there're two facets to the problem, namely:

• relationships between a container (swimlane) and the elements it contains
  
• relationship between a swimlane, the element it represents and the diagrams in which it is used
  

Contrary to what I may have written, I'm not so much concerned by the 1st topic than by the 2nd.

The real topic of interest is being able to produce responsibility diagrams.  I'm looking for a means in EA to add an existing actor to a diagram (dragging it from the Project Browser) then add all diagrams in which the actor intervenes. Each diagram would appear as an icon linked to the actor.  Diagram icons would be clickable in the generated HTML pages to display the diagram.

I haven't found a solution to that problem in EA yet and I would really appreciate getting it as a new feature in a future version of the tool.

Denis

4

Suggestions and Requests / Re: Creating responsibility diagrams

« on: December 14, 2006, 01:31:45 am »

Hi David,

AFAIK, neither EA nor UML imply a relationship between swimlanes and elements.

The UML 2.0 and 2.1 specs really show an association named "represents" from ActivityPartition to Element. Please also take a look at the semantics section for ActivityPartition.  

As far as instances showing up in the Project Browser, check your settings for tree depth. It is possible for elements - particularly instances - to be at too low a level in the model to show up. You'll find the right settings from the main menu via Tools | Options. They are at the bottom of the main Options page.

I have modified the "Max Hierarchy View Depth" and "Open hierarchy view to" options but they have no impact on the "project browser".  They only concern the Hierarchy window.  Unfortunately the actor instances created for the partitions are visible neither in the Project Browser nor in the Hierarchy window.  

In the end here's what I'd like to achieve with EA: retrieve the information that a given actor (represented the normal way or as a partition) has been used in different diagrams,  and produce a diagram which shows an Actor and all of its usages in these diagrams (usage represented by a link between the actor and a diagram).

Denis

5

Suggestions and Requests / Creating responsibility diagrams

« on: December 13, 2006, 07:22:31 am »

Hi there,

I'm trying to produce "responsibility diagrams" showing the relationships of a given actor.  Now when a swimlane in an activity diagram (or BPMN diagram in my case) is used as an instance of an Actor. The instance does not appear in the project view and can therefore not be dragged to a responsibility diagram.

If I drag the Actor instead, it shows no relationships.  The fact that an activity or task is drawn within a swimlane should however be considered as having a relationship with the Actor (or Actor instance?).

I would like the possibility to reuse Actors (or Actor instances?) as swimlanes in some diagrams and as the usual Actor icon in other diagrams.

Denis.

6

Suggestions and Requests / Tree-type lines for Assembly connectors needed

« on: September 29, 2004, 01:33:10 pm »

Hi there,

While creating a Component diagram, I noticed that if you attempt to connect 2 different components to a 3rd component using an Assembly connector for accessing the same service (interface) provided by component3, then you end up with 2 separate assembly connectors:

comp1 ---(o----- comp3

comp2 ---(o----´

Looking from component3 point of view, this seems pretty wierd to me.  I would rather have a single assembly reused by both client components, such as:

comp1 ------	|
	|------(o----- comp3
comp2 ------	|

My suggestion is therefore to provide a tree type of connections for assemblies (the same option provided on the generalization link in Class diagrams).  Look at the UML2 spec for examples of such component wiring diagrams.

Thanks.

D.

7

General Board / Bug? Sub-machines with embedded elements

« on: September 14, 2004, 06:37:54 am »

If on a state machine diagram, I create a sub-machine then "Insert an Embedded Element" to it, let's say ExitPoint1, then I expect to be able to drag and drop that exit point in the diagram which is attached to the sub-machine. But this clearly does not work.  The exit point would show only if I first drag the sub-machine element into the diagram that is attached to it !

The element type for an "Embedded Element" such as Exit Point or Entry Point should be the same as for an "Entry" or "Exit" element as available from the Palette.  The difference should only be a matter of presentation in diagrams (depending on the context).

Why does EA handle these two things as two different types of elements ?  Normal behavior or bug ?

D

8

Uml Process / Misuse of Use Cases

« on: September 17, 2004, 06:19:52 am »

Hi there,

I found this interesting (though not recent) article on how to avoid the misuse of Use Cases:

http://www.korson-mcgregor.com/publications/korson/Korson9803om.htm

I'd love to get your thoughts about the ideas expressed in this paper, and particularly on the 1st part of the article where the author proposes to create "use cases" at different levels of abstraction.  At the lowest levels of abstractions, detailed use cases would be written to provide the complete detailed spec (see fig.1).  And... the idea of keeping requirements separate from interface specifications ("accept payment from customer" vs. "insert coin into slot") is only valid for the 1st level of use cases (the Business requirements).  

But first of all I wonder if use cases should not just be limited to the 1st level of abstraction (as described by the author).  :-/   Aren't the other levels of abstractions just represented by the other UML models that will be produced during the project (Analysis and Design models).

Denis

9

Automation Interface, Add-Ins and Tools / Re: Regression bug.  Copying BPMN to clipboar

« on: December 18, 2006, 01:02:47 am »

We do almost all our work in MS Access - using linked tables into the repository itself.

If you can't figure out how to create queries in MS Access (or your favourite SQL program) to achieve the ends you want, ...

Writing SQL queries is no problem.  But how do you proceed to have a SQL program (like MS Access) access the .eap files in the first place ?

Denis

10

Automation Interface, Add-Ins and Tools / Re: Regression bug.  Copying BPMN to clipboar

« on: December 14, 2006, 01:46:05 am »

We use direct Database queries to assist in rendering edges in groups.

Dear Paolo, would be great if you would share with us the way to implement such database queries (doc available online?) and a practical example dealing with edge rendering ?

Denis

11

Automation Interface, Add-Ins and Tools / Re: Regression bug.  Copying BPMN to clipboar

« on: December 13, 2006, 06:45:28 am »

Thanks Neil and David,

Unfortunately there's no way to select all connectors (Ctrl-A) and change their color in one step...  I did not find a manual way to select more than one connector either (Ctrl-left click does not add to current selection).

Denis

12

Automation Interface, Add-Ins and Tools / Regression bug.  Copying BPMN to clipboard.

« on: December 12, 2006, 01:00:36 am »

Hi,

I just upgraded EA to build 800.  Replaced my previous install of the BPMN add-on by BPMN 1.3.

If I now copy a BPMN diagram (Ctrl-C) to clipboard and paste it into Word, different adornments are not shown, e.g. arrow heads, the end event bold border.

Could you please fix this problem.
Thanks.

Denis