Messages

1

General Board / Re: Creating multiple foreign key associations

« on: May 20, 2010, 12:56:05 am »

Good work. I hope you have formally reported the bugs, and we see them fixed.

Done.

2

General Board / Re: Creating multiple foreign key associations

« on: May 13, 2010, 09:24:42 pm »

Hi Folks,

Ok, I've done some more playing. I've just been able to successfully add two foreign key constraints. The secret was in ensuring that you don't accept the default name for the constraint. If you create one constraint and leave the default name, as soon as you create a second constraint, the name will be the same as the first one and they're treated as one and the same because they have the same name...and changing the name at that point doesn't help...changing the attributes used for the constraint on one changes the constraint on both.

There also seems to be an artifact left after you delete an association from the model. This prevents you from creating a constraint, deleting it, and then creating a constraint with the same name as the one you've just deleted.

Pretty crappy bugs..! And they shouldn't be difficult to fix.

Thanks for everyones input and I hope my experience helps in defining a work around.

Scorpio...

3

General Board / Re: Creating multiple foreign key associations

« on: May 13, 2010, 06:33:01 am »

Ah, are you sure you are deleting the relations? or just removing them from the diagram.
Use Ctrl-Del to "really" delete a relation.

Geert

Definately deleting them. I haven't changed any default settings for warning dialogues, so when I hit delete, I get prompted to delete or hide the association...I've been selecting delete.

I'll try again tommorow, but I really can't afford to be wasting too much time on it. I might have to take what DDL it generates and reverse engineer it into another modeling tool.

I can't believe that others have not had the same issue.

4

General Board / Re: Creating multiple foreign key associations

« on: May 12, 2010, 11:48:26 pm »

Did you ensure you used DIFFERENT FK constraint names - when you created the FKs?

Paolo

Yes. I tried using different names. I even had a strange situation where I deleted all associations between the two entities concerned and created a new one only to have EA tell me that a constraint with that name already existed..!

I'll try a few more things, but at some point I'm going to have to give up and go to a different tool.

Thanks for the feedback.

5

General Board / Re: Creating multiple foreign key associations

« on: May 12, 2010, 08:24:18 pm »

Ok, I've $%&*'ed around and $%&*'ed around and just can't get it to work. I've tried moving them after creation. I've tried creating multiple association before setting the foreign key attributes. Nothing works.

How is it that you are all creating multiple foreign key constraints? Is there a work around or is it that nobody is really using this product for anything serious?

Somebody please enlighten me...!

6

General Board / Re: Creating multiple foreign key associations

« on: May 10, 2010, 05:36:02 pm »

Arrhh..!! Just when I thought it was safe to go back in the water.

I can now create multiple associations for my foreign keys. Now when I go and change one association, it changes all of them...! I went through and one by one and defined my foreign keys, and then thought I'd go through them again and just make sure it was right only to find the first one looked just like the last one...and they're all the same..!

How can EA have this bug? This makes the product unusable.

7

General Board / Re: Creating multiple foreign key associations

« on: May 06, 2010, 10:34:13 pm »

So you're good to go?

Paolo

Yes, good to go...thanks.

8

General Board / Re: Creating multiple foreign key associations

« on: May 06, 2010, 06:52:43 pm »

Firstly, which version of EA are you using, in what environment?

I'm using 7.5.848 Corporate Edition on Windows 7.


Ok. Seems I've come unstuck by by an assumption...the assumption that when EA creates a second association that it doesn't place the connector precisely over the first, and thus appearing to the user that it has done nothing. Turns out I had a half dozen of my attempts one on top of the other and appearing as a single connector. And of course selecting this apparently single connector always selects the uppermost, so you don't get any hints from differing properties in the dialogue.

Whilst correcting this I did find something that would appear to be a bug. I had a foreign key defined for my first association which had two foreign keys relating to a single target primary key...certainly not right, so I selected the appropriate attributes and hit 'Save', only to find it didn't update it at all. I had to delete the association and start again. Pretty poor.

9

General Board / Creating multiple foreign key associations

« on: May 06, 2010, 02:30:44 am »

Hi folks,

I'm still fumbling my way around EA and enjoying the journey.

Today I found myself trying to create two associations between two entities for a data modelling project. Basically, I have a primary key of [pk_contact] in one table, and two foreign keys [fk_primary_contact], and [fk_secondary_contact] that both relate to [pk_contact]. For the life of me I can't figure this out. If I try to add a second association, EA just highlights the first association. The foreign keys dialogue box doesn't give me the option to create more than one association.

I'm sure the answer is simple....help....!! (and thanks in advance)

10

Uml Process / Re: UML for a migration.

« on: June 11, 2010, 06:15:37 pm »

ScorpioTiger,

Maybe you could explain a bit more about this "migration project" of yours.

"Migration" is a word that I've seen used in many different contexts.

Geert

The project is to migrate data from one system to another. The systems provide similar functionality, but are implemented quite differently, so quite a lot of data transformation is required. Both the source and the target are RDBMs and I'm hand coding the migration using SQL.

I guess what I'm trying to determine is if there is some kind of framework or methodology that would allow me to document the data transformations at the most granular level. Presumably if this can be documented at the most granular level, then a model driven approach could not be far off.

In the event that I can't document at the most granular level, then some way that I can produce an abstraction that can be used to help understand the process would be of benefit.

Thanks...

11

Uml Process / UML for a migration.

« on: June 10, 2010, 11:42:00 pm »

Hi Folks,

I'm fairly new to UML, but I'm trying to integrate it into projects as I get the opportunity.

Currently I'm working on a migration project and I'm using Enterprise Architect to document the target database including adding constraints. I then generate DDL to create a target database and write SQL by hand to populate the target.

I'd like to find a methodology that I can use to document the migration, and also get some ideas on how practical it would be to have the migration model driven.

Does anyone have any suggestions on how to approach this, or links to methodologies that others may have used to do this?

I appologise for what to some will seem like UML 101, but I don't yet know enough to know which questions to ask, so I've tried to keep it to what I'm trying to acheive.

Thanks in advance.