Messages

1

Suggestions and Requests / cut/copy/paste in project browser

« on: September 13, 2007, 04:26:21 am »

Lately I have been working on creating a unified implementation model from the reverse engineered models of two similar applications that have drifted apart. I am maintaining several copies of these models (reference/read-only, scratch pad, new work in progress etc.) in one database, so by now it contains some 13000 classes in 140 packages. All of the time i find myself moving stuff around f.i. moving attributes higher up the class tree etc. Within the project browser I can do this easily by dragging but it gets tedious when the expanded list is about a mile long. Also when I accidentally release the mouse button at the wrong moment I have dropped by attribute God knows where in the model desert.

To make my life a little easier the following features would help:

• Can you please implement element cut/copy/paste in the project browser, so I can select my (multiple) items and then navigate at ease to the place where I would want to drop them.
  
• Even more fancy would be the possibility to have multiple open project browsers  
  
• Display the fully qualified name of a selected item in the status bar at the bottom, i.e. including the path through the package tree.
  

Regards, Jan

2

Suggestions and Requests / Auto generated indexes

« on: November 29, 2006, 06:36:15 am »

Is it feasible to have EA generate indexes of model elements in the HTML & RTF report functions? My models are slowly growing to hundreds of elements (organized in a topic tree) and I am beginning to find it difficult to locate items, even if I known their names.
If not, please consider this a feature request.

TIA Jan

3

Suggestions and Requests / Re: RTF Capable Notes Fields.

« on: September 29, 2005, 12:31:24 pm »

Meta-tags? Please explain. Could not find anything on them in the FM, at least not under that name.

Jan

4

Suggestions and Requests / Re: Odd create port/part behaviour

« on: September 28, 2005, 03:36:25 pm »

Just submitted the thing as a bug to sparx sorry to have kept it lying around for so long  

5

Suggestions and Requests / Re: Odd create port/part behaviour

« on: July 26, 2005, 01:00:11 pm »

 :-/ Your remark about doohickeys prompted me to look again.  Apparently I did two things: drop a class on the process and it creates a port for me as I stated.
On the diagram, right-click the process and the 'Add embedded element' menu option lets you create an 'Object node'. Metadata-wise the two are almost the same (one has a 'role' and the other an 'alias').
What I want to do is pretty straightforward. Provide detail for the information that flows between processes and/or data stores. The flow object won't let me do that.
Anyhow, even if i have used the port or object node inappropriately, I hope you will agree with me that EA's behaviour as described is unsound.

Regards, Jan

6

Suggestions and Requests / Odd create port/part behaviour

« on: July 25, 2005, 07:39:23 am »

In an activity diagram I define a port to a process. From the port an information flow runs into a data store. The port exists to allow me to specify details of the information flow as the flow connector itself does not provide that option.
The properties screen for the port does not allow me to specify a class to associate with the port, i.e there is no association.
If I drag a class onto the process EA prompts me to create a port. The new port is implicitly associated with the class as can be seen from the generated name for the port. Still I have no option in the properties window to modify this.
If I rename the port name in the project browser by hitting F2, I can modify the class name from f.i 'class1' to 'class2' there but it does not really change the class. Instead the process creates odd names f.i. 'Port1: class1' becomes 'Port1: class2: class1'.
Similar behavour can be observed when dragging a class onto a class and creating a part object.
Is this whole thing a bit buggy or am I missing something? I am running build 768.

Regards, Jan

7

Suggestions and Requests / Re: Wrong link direction when manually created

« on: June 17, 2005, 02:01:31 pm »

Received word today from Neil Capey that it will be fixed in build 768. Good.

Jan

8

Suggestions and Requests / Wrong link direction when manually created

« on: June 16, 2005, 07:15:13 am »

I have a model containing 2 sets of activities, one with standard stereotype <<process>> and one with custom stereotype <<purpose>>. I select a <<process>> in the navigator and open the 'Create link' window.  
In the window I select an outgoing Realisation link to a <<purpose>>. When I later view the link in a diagram the relation is created the wrong way around and must be explicitly reversed.
Running build 767. Also seen with Association link between Object & Entity.

9

Suggestions and Requests / Link creation from properties window

« on: June 16, 2005, 07:19:31 am »

If an element's properties windows show a links tab, I would find it very convenient if that tab allowed me to add more links and edit existing ones, not just delete.

10

General Board / Local Paths: where active

« on: April 23, 2009, 11:03:49 pm »

Maybe a newbie's question but...

We are working with .eap database files where model elements have attached files. Adding such a file attachment stores the absolute path in the .eap. This is giving us trouble when the .eap and attachment folder are moved.
This makes me wonder:
On what element types and properties do the apply path/expand path commands work.
The general setup shows 'project directory' (default blank) & 'file directory' (default $EAPDIR). How can I use one of these to make an attachment spec independent of the absolute file path?

Confused, Jan

11

General Board / Misc. issues with building profiles

« on: February 01, 2009, 10:56:24 am »

In an attempt to define a structure for a data dictionary I have created a UML profile that contains a hierarchy of stereotypes like f.i.

_stbase (generalizes) _actor (generalizes) role, person, organization etc.

Each level has a small collection of tagged values.  The profile is created in a separate project and exported to XML to be loaded into other projects.  The tags are defined either as attributes on the stereotype (type a) or as associations with <<taggedValue>> stereotype to other stereotypes (type b). These constructions have a number of issues:

When I select a stereotype from the resources window and 'synchronize tags and constraints' it adds not just the stereotype's tags but also the inherited tags. This is good but when I select to add a single tag to an element, the pull-down list does not show any of the type a tags.
 
I would like to be able to 'synchronize tags and constraints' selected model elements rather than  synch all affected model elements from the resource browser.
  
When I define a type b tagged value that takes elements with f.i. stereotype _actor as its value, I would have expected to be able to select from elements stereotyped with role, person, organization etcetera.  This is unfortunately not so.  

When I select to add a single tag, the pull-down list does not show any of the type a tags, only type b.  

Is there a DTD or XSD for the XML format of profiles?
Is there a DTD or XSD for the XML export of 'Reference data' w.r.t stereotypes & tags?
Are both formats equivalent, i.e. carry the same information?

Model elements allow multiple stereotypes to be selected; the stereotype field on the element properties windows typically show just 1 after apply.  Modifying the displayed value there changes just that value. Other selected stereotypes which were not shown are unaffected.  This is misleading.  

A type b tag, which is no longer present in a later import of the same profile, is sort of half-deleted from the model.  It still shows up in the Settings/UML types/tagged values dialog; in there it can be modified but neither saved nor deleted.  Existing values of both type a and b tags are retained.  The profile import process should provide some options for deleted and modified tags, i.e.
1) leave the tag definition and values in place (deletions)
1a) rename the old tag definition and leave values in place (modifications)
2) move the tag definition to an 'orphan' profile and leave values in place (del+mod)
3) remove both tag definition and all values from the model (del+mod)

A new empty model shows no profiles loaded in the resource browser but when selecting a stereotype for a class, it is apparently preloaded with profiles BPMN/DFD/EAUML/WebModelling/MindMapping and associated stuff.  

Etc, etc, I guess this section of EA needs some work. Is there any movement in this area?

Regards, Jan

12

General Board / HTML report: how to include attached files

« on: November 27, 2008, 03:45:13 am »

I am regularly generating HTML reports from a requirements model which contains file attachments to model elements. The intent is to pack the reports into a .zip and distribute it to reviewers or otherwise move it around. Unfortunately this breaks the URL's to the files which contain absolute paths to the file location.
Is there a way to make EA: 1) copy the files from their source location to a folder in the HTML output folder when generating the report and 2) generate URL's with relative pathnames to the copied files?

13

General Board / Cross referencing attribute types

« on: August 09, 2007, 05:18:08 am »

Hi all,

The Unique Interface got me again, here goes:

I have several models collected in one database. Each model typically consists of a package containing classes for business objects with attributes, and another package containing classes that are the data types of the attributes.
The models partially overlap and I have been asked to produce a unified model. So, I am moving selected business objects from one model to another.
Next step is to move only those attribute type classes over which will be needed in the result model. How do I find out which classes have an attribute with a selected class as its type? I turned to the relationship matrix but it does not seem to let me do this.

Stunned, Jan

14

General Board / Re: How2 link items in hand-crafted XMI to existin

« on: August 06, 2007, 10:38:40 am »

Yep, that's precisely what I am doing. I build an example target structure by hand, export the XMI and use that as template for my conversion script.

Jan

15

General Board / Re: How2 link items in hand-crafted XMI to existin

« on: August 06, 2007, 02:27:09 am »

Hi Martin,

Close but not quite. Inheritance is not an issue at the moment. What I want to do is define the type of imported attributes to be one of the predefined ones. There are several hundred attributes in my model. The predefined ones are regular classes. When I find the method to do this I expect I can easily extend the approach to make imported classes inherit from predefined ones.

Regards, Jan