Messages

1

General Board / Re: hyperlink to an EA diagram

« on: December 27, 2007, 05:03:06 am »

Hey,

The only way I know something like this is possible is by publishing your project (or part of it) to HTML and creating links to the created web pages (containing the diagrams).

There are two problems with this solution:
1) you have to publish the solution manually (might be positive since you can better control when a change becomes 'public')
2) far worse: the names of the generated pages are not fixed... meaning you can create a link to a diagram but next time you generate the html pages your links are broken... as a result the only meaningful link is to the start page.

Anyone knows a way around this "feature" ?

Tom

2

General Board / Re: Extract .MDB

« on: December 20, 2007, 04:49:10 am »

Hey,

Don't know what you exactly mean with extracting the mdb file, but I do know that you can simply change the EAP file extension to MDB and open the repository in MS Access.

Kr,
TG

3

General Board / import DB schema AS400

« on: December 20, 2007, 06:12:58 am »

We use the client access odbc driver to import an AS400 (V4R4) database schema.

The import succeeds and the database name is set correctly to DB2 (my default database), but the data types of the columns are wrong. Instead of "DECIMAL" it uses "numeric" and omits the scale and precision (well, they are there but not visible). The first type is defined out-of-the-box as a DB2 type the latter is unknown for DB2.

I just found a "workaround" that works in our case. I reset the DBMS options of the package to another database e.g. SQL Server 2005 and let EA convert everything... SQL Server knows the (or rather "a") numeric type and shows a scale and precision for it. Then I convert back to DB2 and there they are all my DECIMAL columns (including scale and precision).

Anyone any idea what might go wrong here ? I have the impression it uses the right DB but the wrong types or would this rather be an ODBC problem ? Don't know how they map those types...

TG

4

General Board / Re: Data schemas with foreign keys

« on: December 20, 2007, 04:45:57 am »

Hi Dave,

We have imported databases from SQLServer 2005 without any problem. All relationships are correctly created without doing anything special or configuring some obscure features in EA.

The import of some databases from AS400 suffers some problems (of no importance here) and no relations are created, but that is logical since they did not define foreign key constraints... - please no comment on this

Did anyone successfully import a Sybase ASE database ?
Did you try a different ODBC driver?

Kr,
Tom

5

General Board / Re: Disappearing scenario's...

« on: December 18, 2007, 07:28:24 am »

Hey
Thanks for your reply.

We are using private models (each user has his own copy). True, you have to watch out when you use links to elements in other packages. We can't prevent it, luckily the influence is only on the diagram itself not on the elements (the links don't actually disappear, the elements are simply removed from the diagram) Personally I think this is a serious problem. Don't know if Sparx is going to do something about it. Anyway it makes sharing models and reusing elements quite hard, but at least you don't lose information.

In this case - the disappearing use case scenario's - we actually lose information. The scenario's are really gone from the repository, so no way of getting them back. If we can't pinpoint when or why this happens it makes EA very untrustworthy.

6

General Board / Disappearing scenario's...

« on: December 13, 2007, 06:49:49 am »

Sometimes we lose use case scenario's... At the moment we have no clue when or why they disappear because it does not happen all the time - are we lucky !? The big problem is, you don't notice it immediately.

Our situation is:
- build 818 professional using EAP files
- version control via VSS (and different settings for packages in the same project)
- 2 or 3 people working on the same (version controlled) package of a project

It seems to be linked to the import/export of the xmi files for version control / locking.

Does anyone have similar problems ? Any idea how to prevent such problems ?

Kr,
Tom

7

General Board / Re: EA/TFS version control issue

« on: December 12, 2007, 08:03:57 am »

I've had a similar problem using EA with VSS.

Don't know the exact scenario in which my classes disappear but it is certainly linked to class diagrams containing classes that are part of different packages (which have other version control settings).

I was hoping it was linked to our usage of .eap files and was thinking of moving to SQL Server...

Kr,
Tom

8

General Board / Re: Changes to import DB schema in build 816 ???

« on: September 24, 2007, 12:44:59 am »

Response from Sparx...

This is a known issue and will be fixed in Build 817 !
When ? Not specified  

Is there a list of known bugs/issues available somewhere ?

Kr,
TG

9

General Board / Changes to import DB schema in build 816 ???

« on: September 21, 2007, 12:52:55 am »

Hey,

In version 6.5 (build 806) I have used the "Import DB schema" to reverse an AS400/DB2 database schema. In version 7 (build 814 and 816) it does not return any object. It seems to connect properly - no error messages whatsoever - but the list of available database objects is completely empty...

I tested it on a fresh build 806 installation, it works just fine. I upgraded that installation to build 816 and it fails (same odbc data source, no changes, default settings).

Anyone knows of changes in this part of EA that might have an impact on this ?

My connections to MS SQL Server works correctly on all versions, I only have the problem with my AS400 connections.

Quite frustrating since it did work just fine

Any ideas ? Thanks.
Kr,
TG

10

General Board / Transform a class on itself

« on: August 29, 2007, 06:34:42 am »

Is there a way I can transform a class on itself: the transformation should not create a new class element but adapt/replace the class element it is transforming without losing information or breaking relationships...

I would like to do this to automatically add a bunch of tagged values to the attributes of the class. Is there another way I could/should do this (without using the automation interface) ?

Thanks.
Tom

11

General Board / Re: Does any of these products run on Windows Vist

« on: August 19, 2007, 10:37:24 pm »

Same for us.

We have been running version 6.x and 7 (Prof edition) since March on Vista Ultimate and didn't notice any problem whatsoever.

I definitely hope it stays that way

Greetz,
Tom

12

General Board / Export/import of Tagged Value Types

« on: August 17, 2007, 04:24:24 am »

I defined a number of tagged value types via "Settings|UML|Tagged Value Types" in project ABC.

Is there a way I can export these now from project ABC and import them in project XYZ ?

I can't find it in the "Tools|Export Reference Data" dialog  
but I might be overlooking it...

Thanks.
Tom

13

Uml Process / Re: PIM and attribute data types

« on: August 17, 2007, 02:10:49 am »

Thanks Paolo.

That's right, if you don't add at least one datatype the "custom" product is removed from the list.

What I don't understand is that EA really advocates MDA, PIM and the other reutemeteut - that's Dutch slang for "related things" - but does not deliver "out-of-the-box" the products/datatypes to create these in a natural way. Or am I missing something ?

Anyway, does there exist a standardized list of basic "conceptual" datatypes ? I can make up a list of course but would definitely prefer a standard.

Another thing I don't get is the "Common Type" thing in EA. Does anyone knows how it is used ? I have looked for a clear description but can't find it... Why is it not a fixed list of datatypes ? I would assume it to be the list of basic datatypes I am looking for but it is not !

Kr,
Tom

14

Uml Process / PIM and attribute data types

« on: August 16, 2007, 02:04:48 am »

Hi,

If you want to create a platform independent model which data types should you use for the attributes ?

If you set the "language" of the class to "none" which I would prefer in a PIM, you only have a very limited list of default types. Of course I could create my own basic types as classes in my model but this does not seem to be the right way to work or is it ?

Thanks,
Tom

15

Automation Interface, Add-Ins and Tools / Association classes in transformation

« on: September 13, 2007, 06:39:15 am »

How do you know in a transformation template that an "association" connector has an "association class" ? And can you access the details from that class from the connector template ?

Thanks,
TG