Messages

1

Suggestions and Requests / Re: Capture requirements from Microsoft Word

« on: April 21, 2010, 09:50:05 am »

While the functionality is neat it has two serious flows:
1. After dropping text it seems to be stored in some strange place. It is not a tagged value it is a name but it cannot be accessed in any reasonable way.... until you try to edit requirement in project browser (pressing F2) and then you hit OK. From now on requirement name is reflected in properties.
2. For such functionality it doesn't make much sense to copy the text into a name field that has 255 chars limit, you could take either first line or 80 chars as name and put rest in notes. Otherwise the part of the text is gone. (I should also point out that context menu of such long item spans over 1500 pixels in width )

BTW does it help a bug to be reported many times? Should I report it too or will your report do?

Regards
Kris

2

Suggestions and Requests / Ribbon request

« on: March 31, 2009, 04:29:51 am »

Following the discussion in http://www.sparxsystems.com/cgi-bin/yabb/YaBB.cgi?num=1238008819 I think that adding a ribbon is a great idea.
At first when I put my hands on Office 2007 I didn't like it so I bought an extension for classic menu. It was handy at first but now it has been long covered by electronic dust and I really like the ribbon.
It's drawback is that you need to get the items right - put elements in a way that will make them easily accessible for common tasks. Simple switching from menu to ribbon is for many applications a bad solution because bad ribbon makes much worse user experience than bad main menu does.

Ribbon allows for very quick access to many functions and it is very usable... after getting used to it  .

regards
Kris

3

Suggestions and Requests / Re: Reporting actors with every use case?

« on: August 11, 2008, 06:18:02 pm »

I think you can get what you want if you have a diagram with UC's and Actors in each package. Then you can select
+Package
++Diagram
+++Element <- this will create documentation for each element on a diagram which will include Actors from all over the project.

HTH
Kris

4

Suggestions and Requests / Re: Alias in Project Browser

« on: July 05, 2008, 07:26:36 am »

Yes but this only changes the sides at which information is. Because in this manner I don't see the text value for the element for exactly the same reason

I will file feature request for it and lets see what it does.

Kris

5

Suggestions and Requests / Alias in Project Browser

« on: July 04, 2008, 10:55:16 pm »

Please implement an option for displaying alias in project browser.
Ideally configured by package ,
realisticly - by Project or User will be just fine

Rationale: When using alias to track unique IDs of requirements and Use Cases it is not possible to see in Project Browser what ID use case has. This requires putting an ID into the name field which clutters the name.

Regards Kris

6

Suggestions and Requests / Version and Phase moved to model settings

« on: June 08, 2008, 07:17:35 am »

Please move options Version and Phase (Tools>Options>Objects) to be model based not user based. Right now whenever I switch projects I need to remember to set corect values again and again.  If those were saved for a project instead of user I would not need to keep right versions and phases in other document they would always be in place.

It would also be a nice thing to have an option to allow for friendly behaviour of these values: (e.g Set Version and Phase on modify). I expect it would change Version and Phase values to current for the project whenever significant element properties are modified.

Regards
Kris

7

Suggestions and Requests / Re: Plugin interface for documentation generation

« on: May 07, 2008, 09:10:04 am »

Hi Dermot,

I know there is possibility of calling EA automation interface and building my own report generator, I've been there.
But that is not what I was suggesting here.
There are times when I could get things done simply by intercepting what EA does. So may proposal was actually like this:
EA Generates document ->
foreach( element in docElements )
  if there is interceptor
     call Interceptor
     react on result - whether to include or exclude element or put new changed text in a document or whatever would be possible
  else
     do standard EA stuff
end

This way I could modify what EA does without going into writing my own generator. I don't have the time to write very general one with templates so I end up modifying specific code for specific customers.

8

Suggestions and Requests / Plugin interface for documentation generation intercept

« on: April 29, 2008, 08:43:31 pm »

One of the things that are both good and not good enough is the documentation.
Given different needs of people I don't think Sparxians will ever be able to create document generator that will allways suit everyone.
I think it would be great to have some kind of interceptor interface to allow those who are interested to intercept parts of the documentation and do the filtering/updating/whatever they need. This way I would not be required to write my own document generator just to do few simple things that are not possible now.

Kris
PS. Correct me if I'm wrong but I have not found such interface in current EA API.

9

General Board / Re: How to Suppress Stereotype in HTML Document

« on: April 13, 2010, 12:15:06 am »

For first part unfortunately I don't have the access to the code now, but I did it by modifiying javascript in HTML template, IIRC this was done in tocBuildItem function. I belive I simply cut out the stereotype near the end .

The second part is easier: you just need to change template "Body Object" and remove unncessary text. Element fields are marked with #....#.
so the beginning may look like this:
<span class="ObjectTitle">#NAME#</span>

Regards
Kris

10

General Board / Re: Create a stereotype by script in the list

« on: April 13, 2010, 07:24:19 am »

ok. I checked again and when I create file "test.vbs" in the same directory as "test.eap" it works for me.
As for SQLQuery if it worked it would prove documentation to be wrong because EA docs state that:
"Enables execution of a SQL select statement ..."

Funny thing is that if you put following code into ea scripts (View->Scripting) it works though it is almost identical to previous one

Code: [Select]

Sub AddSt
      dim stereotypes as EA.Collection
      set stereotypes = Repository.Stereotypes
      
      dim testStereo as EA.Stereotype
      set testStereo = stereotypes.AddNew( "Test12410", "Class" )

      testStereo.Update()
      stereotypes.Refresh()
      
      Session.Output( "Added Stereotype: " & testStereo.Name )
      
      set testStereo = nothing
End sub

AddSt

Kris

11

General Board / Re: Create a stereotype by script in the list

« on: April 12, 2010, 10:03:19 pm »

for EAP files you can also use command line vbscript and SQL.
test.vbs:

Code: [Select]

Set conn=CreateObject("ADODB.Connection")
conn.Open "Provider=Microsoft.Jet.OLEDB.4.0;" & "Data Source=test.eap"
set TypeLib = CreateObject("Scriptlet.TypeLib")
GUID = Left(TypeLib.GUID, Len(TypeLib.GUID)-2 )
sql="INSERT INTO t_stereotypes ([Stereotype], [AppliesTo], [Description], [ea_guid] ) VALUES ('new_stereo', 'class', 'description', '" + GUID + "' );"
conn.execute sql

Theoretically below automation code should work too but ea throws some error....

Code: [Select]

Set Repo=CreateObject("EA.Repository")
Repo.OpenFile("test.eap")
Set sts = Repo.Stereotypes
set newSt = sts.AddNew("testStereo1", "class")
newSt.Update()

Kris

12

General Board / Search accessible in project

« on: April 17, 2009, 01:18:40 am »

Is it possible to define search that will be accessible to all people that are using a model?
Right now custom searches are saved in local xml but I can't expect several dozen people to import searches that are created.

Regards
Kris

13

General Board / Re: Duplicating large package structure...

« on: April 15, 2009, 11:52:54 pm »

I thought about that but unfortunately in worst case scenario there are 4 concurrent versions of the system:
- Current - system the way it works now - no changes
- Tested - system that has been developed and is now being tested - very small changes
- Developed - system that has been analyzed and is undergoing development in dev teams - changes that come from realisation of RQ's both big and small
- Analyzed - new system features that are being prepared - frantic changes

Right now I'd rather have someone conciously update 1-3 models in single repo than go into somehow automated update.
Also there is a question: does merge work correctly with diagrams? Or just the structure?

Regards
Kris

14

General Board / Duplicating large package structure...

« on: April 15, 2009, 10:46:39 pm »

Hi,

is there a way to copy large package structure in EA without going thrugh XML? Currently I export the tree to xml and import it again with new guids. But it takes ages to process very large xml file back and forth .

The reason for such action is we are working on new version while the old one is still being worked on. So I need to take current state of the model make a new branch of it inside one repository and allow working on both.

Regards
Kris

15

General Board / Re: Versioning and Database - how to ?

« on: March 31, 2009, 02:22:32 am »

EA uses pessimistic locking and that is probably why it does not allow to get old version while package is checked out.
Getting an old version for modifications means one of two things:
1. you did something you didn't want to
2. you want to modify and older version of the model in paralel without changing your current version.
Regardless of the way you work, if you want to revert to an old version of the package/model than do it in version control system and then read into the database.
If you want to work on paralel versions create a branch and second database schema to import it into. Remember though that it will be very complicated to merge your branch with the trunk.

regards
Kris