Messages

1

Suggestions and Requests / Re: Importing Together-6.0.1 UML-1.4 models and Ja

« on: February 28, 2007, 10:25:56 am »

well, here is the simple test I did:
- check all options in model validation
- open a new class diagram
- add an interface and a class
- add an association between the two
- generate java code

Result: interface has attributes and class none... Clearly no check done and code completely wrong even not corresponding to the model.

2

Suggestions and Requests / Re: Importing Together-6.0.1 UML-1.4 models and Ja

« on: February 28, 2007, 08:34:27 am »

Thanks Simon.
Indeed after such mishaps we checked this option and others.

It is interesting to know that EA doesn't check the model that much. This confirms that it allows lots of diagrams to be wrong. For example, an interface having associations... and it generates such code! Is there a way to enforce basic OO checks?

3

Suggestions and Requests / Re: Importing Together-6.0.1 UML-1.4 models and Ja

« on: February 27, 2007, 03:38:24 pm »

One of the major selling point of EA is its attractive price structure. But when it comes to many developers using the tool and wasting lots of hours, even an expensive tool like Rational Rose becomes cheap. Of course, that's just an example, we are still evaluating...

4

Suggestions and Requests / Re: Importing Together-6.0.1 UML-1.4 models and Ja

« on: February 27, 2007, 03:34:51 pm »

Hi Simon,

thanks for your offer.
Here are the main bugs we found. We have a Java project with over 500 classes (maybe 80 packages) and we'd like to reverse engineer it so to draw diagrams, update them, forward engineer the code, etc.

Everything is working fine up to forward engineer or sync with the code. At that point, EA spends 10s of minutes sync'ing even if the changes affected one or 2 classes (I don't remember this being that bad in earlier versions). But the most troubling is for methods that we changed names: the code therein is lost! More often than not, EA generates code without verifying if package names are correct (in particular those in its model!). This happened in the past though.

So basic refactoring simply doesn't work and that's probably the most useful feature of a UML tool IMHO.

5

Suggestions and Requests / Re: Importing Together-6.0.1 UML-1.4 models and Ja

« on: February 21, 2007, 11:04:25 am »

I agree with Tomte. I have been using EA for a long time as well as MDG link for Eclipse. I love EA diagramming features even though it allows some UML errors here and there.

But the most annoying feature is code generation/reverse engineering. It is soooo sloooow and wrong! I think it was better on version 4 than it is now... Now, I am really scared to generate/merge any code because even if it takes way longer than it should, it may overwrite my code ... arghh total disaster.

So using EA just for diagrams is not enough, not worth the price as free tools do better. We can live with bad looking (but correct) diagrams but wasting time redoing code is out of question.

Actually, for our next project, if Sparx keeps being silent on this issue, then we'll replace all our EA license with a real, developer oriented UML tool.