Messages

1

General Board / Re: Create XSD using UML Prof for XSD, XSD Tbox -

« on: October 08, 2014, 10:59:36 pm »

For the record, I opened a support ticket yesterday via email and have received no reply thus far. Since there is a NIEM-UML capability in EA, I wondered what the official posture / answer was re: its ability or inability to do all of the work, e.g. create XML Canonical Schema > NIEM model > NIEM IEPD.

2

General Board / Re: Create XSD using UML Prof for XSD, XSD Tbox -

« on: October 08, 2014, 05:14:05 am »

Yes. In general it's the mapping between the constructs used in XSD and UML. There are quite some which you can not easily / at all map from XSD to UML. Sorry, but it's too long ago to remember the details.

q.

No worries. Thanks for your input.

3

General Board / Re: Create XSD using UML Prof for XSD, XSD Tbox -

« on: October 08, 2014, 02:00:20 am »

There are some people here using EA for XSD modeling. I once used it and found the traps the hard way. XSD is much more flexible in what can be expressed than UML. So you need a number of conventions/restrictions. Google is your friend here. I never noticed NIEM (probably because it was not available that time) but what I saw I guess that the conventions are somehow coupled to it. So I'd stick to using NIEM, or at least I'd give it a try.

q.

Thanks Qwerty. When you say Traps, do you mean the inability of EA to model certain XML Schema constructs? e.g.

http://www.sparxsystems.com/enterprise_architect_user_guide/9.2/soa_and_xml/model_xsd.html

"Modeling Restrictions:
The following XML Schema constructs cannot be modeled in Enterprise Architect:
•      appinfo
•      field
•      key
•      keyref
•      notation
•      redefine
•      selector
•      substitutionGroup
•      unique"

Incidentally, for anyone on LinkedIn, I've initiated a conversation about modeling tools to use for NIEM-UML on the NIEM Group:

https://www.linkedin.com/groups/National-Information-Exchange-Model-NIEM-1903175/about

4

General Board / Re: Create XSD using UML Prof for XSD, XSD Tbox -

« on: October 07, 2014, 10:35:09 pm »

Should I submit this question through a formal tech support process? Anyone here creating XML Schemas > NIEM-UML IEPDs?

Wondering if there are any good tutorials for using EA for NIEM work.

I see there are two ways to create an XML Schema in EA 11:

1) UML Profile for XSD
2) XML Schema Toolbox

Starting fresh, which method is better / preferred and why?
The end goal here would be having an MDM XML Canonical Schema,
then mapping it to a NIEM IEPD.

While I'm licensed for EA, I also see there's a free open source tool from Oracle for NIEM-UML work named CAM.

Trying to select a tool, fast (unfortunately) to do this type of work. Can anyone explain the pros and cons of using EA vs. CAM?

"Import and use the XSD Datatypes into Enterprise Architect only if you are modeling the XSD model using the UML Profile for XSD (instead of using the XML Schema Toolbox)". Project deadlines are forcing me to choose quickly rather than take the time to assess each product properly. Not something I'm comfortable with, so I'm wondering if anyone who's used both EA and CAM could comment on their experiences with each tool for creating XML Schemas and also NIEM IEPDs.

5

General Board / Create XSD using UML Prof for XSD, XSD Tbox - NIEM

« on: October 07, 2014, 06:48:26 am »

I see there are two ways to create an XML Schema in EA 11:

1) UML Profile for XSD
2) XML Schema Toolbox

Starting fresh, which method is better / preferred and why?
The end goal here would be having an MDM XML Canonical Schema,
then mapping it to a NIEM IEPD.

While I'm licensed for EA, I also see there's a free open source tool from Oracle for NIEM-UML work named CAM.

Trying to select a tool, fast (unfortunately) to do this type of work. Can anyone explain the pros and cons of using EA vs. CAM?

"Import and use the XSD Datatypes into Enterprise Architect only if you are modeling the XSD model using the UML Profile for XSD (instead of using the XML Schema Toolbox)". Project deadlines are forcing me to choose quickly rather than take the time to assess each product properly. Not something I'm comfortable with, so I'm wondering if anyone who's used both EA and CAM could comment on their experiences with each tool for creating XML Schemas and also NIEM IEPDs.

6

General Board / Classify lookup tables in EA to keep off diagram?

« on: January 27, 2014, 11:19:42 pm »

How would I classify Lookup Table / Domain entities in EA v10 such that I could auto-exclude them from a particular diagram? Use case is that I may have dozens of lookup tables and would like to have a view / diagram auto-exclude them vs. having to drag all entities *but* these ones onto a diagram.

I see there's a KEYWORDS field for table entities. Could I put "DOMAIN" or "LOOKUP" in there and auto-exclude that way?

Could, or should, I use a tagged value of some sort?

The inelegant way to do it may be to prefix each entity with a name like DOMAIN (or DMN for short). But that would feel better as prefixes--don't know if EA can do a sort of entities starting with the last characters of a name--doubtful.

7

General Board / Re: Any plug-ins for MySQL round-tripping?

« on: January 27, 2014, 11:14:30 pm »

I have only heard of people looking for that. Never for someone having done it.

q.

Thanks Qwerty. I think MySQL Workbench can do round-trip data modeling. Something I'll be looking into.

8

General Board / Any plug-ins for MySQL round-tripping?

« on: January 27, 2014, 02:54:10 am »

Has anyone developed plug-ins or add-ons compatible with EA v10.x that would allow round-trip data modeling for MySQL? In other words, like Erwin can evidently do, can I change my MySQL DB model in EA, then have EA generate difference scripts that would apply the changes to a live MySQL DB? This would be a powerful thing.

Or would it be better to use a MySQL-specific tool rather than EA if MySQL is my DBMS of choice for a given project? Would prefer to stick with EA.

Failing that, is there any such round-tripping add-in / plug-in for EA that would allow data model round-tripping, as described above, for PostgreSQL?

Thanks.

9

General Board / Which versions of DB2 does EA v10 support?

« on: January 15, 2014, 07:37:14 am »

Which specific versions of DB2 does Enterprise Architect v10.x support?
Had a more generic post earlier about DBs supported. But need to know which releases of DB2 are supported. Thanks very much.

10

General Board / Re: Which DBs at EA 10.0 for fwd /rev engineering?

« on: January 11, 2014, 11:41:28 pm »

Thanks Qwerty. I know ERWIN and PowerDesigner would be superior tools. But this is for a personal project and I don't have USD 3K to 5K+ for a license.

Will look at the conceptual class model. Or suppose I could always just pick a DB platform--either MySQL or PostgreSQL. And if I didn't want to continue with it, I could forward engineer, then reverse engineer back into EA. Of course I'd probably lose lots of useful metadata. Will also have to look into the transformations you mentioned.

Possibly time to create a new thread to see if anyone's out there using EA specifically for DB design--and how they get around missing features compared with the much more expensive purpose-built DB modeling / design / deploy tools like ERWIN, ER/STUDIO, and PowerDesigner.

EA is not really a tool to design/deploy databases. Probably you should look at something like ERWIN (I guess that it's still in use).

However, you can start with a conceptual class model and then have EA transform that to either RDBMS which you then can refine. Have a look in the help for "transformation". It's not difficult to run the pre-defined transformation. If you're skilled enough you can even modify the transformation script to create specialized target systems.

q.

11

General Board / Re: Which DBs at EA 10.0 for fwd /rev engineering?

« on: January 11, 2014, 07:41:37 am »

For a particular project, I'm not yet committed to either MySQL (and its forks) or PostgreSQL. How difficult would it be to develop a DB model in EA using one DB, then possibly migrating to another. Since EA doesn't seem to allow starting with a Conceptual DB Model--last time I used it, I believe I had to choose a specific DB type to start building a DB model.

One issue I'm facing--I know very little about MySQL other than that it's quite common for use on the web and very fast. But it seems not to be a full-fledged RDBMS, e.g. at some point--possibly even the present--it doesn't or didn't have FK constraints (that would be a show stopper for me because that sort of biz logic I prefer to have the RDBMS enforce).

Whereas PostgreSQL is a full-fledged RDBMS, evidently close in feature parity to SQL Server and Oracle. At least to the extent that, if you follow the GIS vendor Esri (of which EA supports developing ArcGIS geodatabases), PostgreSQL is one of the DB platforms Esri supports for Enterprise geodatabases--but not MySQL.

There are a number of recent threads about the MySQL version. MariaDB is not officially supported, but as it is from the same developer as MySQL (actually the prefixes are the names of his daughters) you can try to replace MySQL with MariaDB. This is just a good guess, not based on any experience.

No idea about DB2 and PostgreSQL. I only know that people had good experiences with the latter according to their posts here. You could mail Sparx sales support for details.


q.

12

General Board / Re: Which DBs at EA 10.0 for fwd /rev engineering?

« on: January 11, 2014, 02:58:22 am »

http://www.sparxsystems.com/enterprise_architect_user_guide/10/database_engineering/supported_databases.html

Thanks for that. Any idea which version(s) of DB2 are supported? The reference cited above just generically says "DB2".

Also wondering what version(s) of MySQL are supported--and if the non-commercial MySQL fork/branch named MariaDB is supported--and if so which version. Same for PostgreSQL--which version(s) of it is supported?

13

General Board / Which DBs at EA 10.0 for fwd /rev engineering?

« on: January 10, 2014, 04:47:05 am »

Which specific DB platforms and versions does EA 10.0 support for forward and reverse engineering? Most of the fact sheets and other available documentation seem to only reference EA v9.

Wondering specifically about support for SQL Server 2008 R2, SQL Server 2012, Oracle 12c, and the latest MySQL, DB2, and PostgreSQL versions.

14

General Board / Re: Which edition of EA v10 is the download trial?

« on: January 11, 2014, 11:42:16 pm »

The trial covers all editions for 30 days. You will be asked upon startup which one you'll try in the session.

q.

Installed last night and saw what you mentioned--I just chose Corporate. Thanks again for the assistance.

15

General Board / Which edition of EA v10 is the download trial?

« on: January 11, 2014, 05:04:34 am »

Is it Professional? Corporate? etc? Wondering if it is crippled in any way. So if I purchase an edition for personal use, will I be able to import my EAP projects fully from the trial edition to a purchased edtion?

I have full access to Corporate edition here at work. But would like to work on my data modeling skills at home.

Thanks very much.