Messages

1

Automation Interface, Add-Ins and Tools / Re: Feedback from MDG specializations

« on: January 10, 2024, 06:28:39 pm »

Adepreter - sounds like you want a Toolbox/diagram type that allows ALL elements from EVERY notation EA has to offer.

Recipe for chaos, me thinks !

Good luck with your solution architects doing anything consistent and standardised there ! Constraints are there for a reason 

2

Automation Interface, Add-Ins and Tools / Re: How to transform a logical data model to a physical one

« on: January 10, 2024, 06:20:56 pm »

Hi Arun,

The simplest way I have found is this :
1. Set the database you want to use via Settings/Settings/Database Datatypes and choose your preferred DB from the Product Name dropdown
2. In the model browser, highlight/select the package where your class diagrams are that you want to transform
3. Click Design/Transform/Apply Transformation
4. A list of classes from the package should appear. Deselect any you don't want to be transformed (also click 'Include Child Packages' if you want sub-packages to be transformed as well
5.  On the right of that dialog is the Transformation window. Scroll down and tick 'Tables'
6. Click 'Do Transform' and the transformation will run, creating a new diagram and new physical objects linked to the logical ones you selected originally.

Done !

Hope that helps.

Matthew

3

General Board / Showing the link between an instance and its classifier

« on: May 17, 2023, 01:06:34 am »

For various reasons, I want to have the multiple 'copies' of a data object on the same BPMN diagram, so that I can show how different activities in the process update the data object (and I don't want relations all over the place). I know I can't do this as an object can only exist once on any given diagram. However, I can create multiple 'instances' of the data object, where the name of the instance will be suffixed with the name of the classifier.

This almost does what I want, but I would have expected things like the Traceability window and the Inspector to show some sort of relationship between the classifier and the instance. It doesn't. The only way you know the two are related is :
- the instance has the ':classifer_name' as the suffix
- if you right-click the instance, you can click 'Features/Find Classifier' and it takes you to the Classifier in the Project Browser
- you can also right-click the Classifier and do 'Advanced/Classifier Properties' which show the properties of the source object

Right-clicking the instance and do 'Advanced/Parent' allows you to select the parent object of which it is an instance, and this then creates a sub-type/super-type relation that can now be seen in the Traceability Window, but shouldn't it have done this automatically when you choose to create an instance of the original object - why should I have to specifically state what object is the parent of the instance, when I used the object to create the instance in the first place  ?

So, EA is maintaining a link between the two objects, but why can't we see that link as a traceable relation ?

Are there any other ways of knowing and showing which objects are the classifiers of which instances ?

4

General Board / Re: How to generate a single DDL file with all changes included

« on: April 28, 2023, 12:38:06 am »

I think you might be right, qwerty 

5

General Board / Re: Archimate 3.2?

« on: April 27, 2023, 12:50:42 am »

Sparx EA is used by many companies who want a cost effective way of modelling across multiple domains using up-to-date standards.

It needs to be updated to ArchiMate 3.2 as soon as possible otherwise it starts to lose traction with companies.

6

General Board / Re: How to generate a single DDL file with all changes included

« on: April 27, 2023, 12:47:07 am »

Hey guys, have you got any thoughts about this one ?

7

General Board / Re: How to generate a single DDL file with all changes included

« on: April 24, 2023, 05:20:44 pm »

bump

8

General Board / How to generate a single DDL file with all changes included

« on: April 14, 2023, 01:21:20 am »

Hi EA Gurus,

One of our developers has created a physical DB model in EA, to generate PostgreSQL DDL. He uses the database builder and does a 'Show Differences' option to see all the differences between the previous model and the new version.
It displays a dialog of all the changes on the left, and on the right the relevant DDL is shown. But this means the developer has to click on every single difference and copy/paste the DDL into a file.

Is there anyway of generating the entire DDL for all differences in one go in one file ?

Thanks

Matthew

9

Bugs and Issues / Re: Print diagram full page

« on: March 09, 2023, 03:53:53 am »

I use the same method as Matsda - I set all diagrams to be A3, Landscape, with Scaling to fit 1 page, and when printing to PDF it comes out lovely. This works in v15 and v16.1

10

Bugs and Issues / Re: Major connection/SQL errors since moving to v16.1

« on: March 09, 2023, 03:50:16 am »

Geert - no I don't think so. We are using a SQL Server database on an Azure platform to host the model DB, which is what we did for v15 - it's the same DB. I will check the connection method.

I tried to increase the timeout parameter in case that helped and it seemed to initially, but then it got worse again.

ahavey - at least it is not just me then !

11

General Board / Re: Change Management, Baselines and Release Notes

« on: March 02, 2023, 03:34:18 am »

Thanks Geert and Jose, I will try that.

It's seems a bit naff though, that you have to output two documents and then use another software company's product to find changes in your model. Come-on Sparx, come up with a better solution ! Some form of externally accessible tree-structure output that mimics the Baseline Compare in EA would be a start.

12

General Board / Re: Discussions in Sparx do you use it?

« on: March 02, 2023, 02:36:26 am »

We tried using the discussions capability. We didn't like it. It focused on the 'what' rather than the 'why'. Proper discussions via Teams sharing screens has been SO much more valuable. Elevated the conversations from 'what is that entity and why is it linked to this one' to 'what requirement is this trying to model and why is this important to the user' as well as 'why is this model here when we have this other one that does something very similar - what's the difference between them, and actually, if it was modelled like this it could cover all these other possibilities'.

I think it's of very limited value.

Matthew

13

General Board / Re: Slow performance on Azure SQL

« on: March 02, 2023, 02:15:42 am »

Geert - these are the details for our Azure instance of a SQL Server DB for the EA Repository :

It’s running on Standard tier, S0, with 10 DTUs assigned, 30GB Maximum Storage size. No elastic pool, nothing extra and it’s running at about £12pcm.

It is a very small repository at the moment (about 260mb) supporting 4 concurrent users.

Matthew

14

Bugs and Issues / Major connection/SQL errors since moving to v16.1

« on: March 01, 2023, 11:23:01 pm »

Hi everyone,

Recently I moved from version 15.2 to 16.1, and since then I (as well as a few colleagues also on v16) have been having frequent issues and errors such as :

Sparx Systems Database API [0x00001072] SQL API Open FAILED with error: 08S01 Connection failure
Context:
Select Style, ea_guid from t_object where  ea_guid IN ('{9EE7083B-6934-4c22-8958-52D2D715DFAC}','{A9343305-14ED-4c84-B6BF-ED3E6768F71D}','{0CE34EB3-33E9-4da2-90E1-1E41137834FD}','{28B3BAF8-BE89-410e-B374-D2AADA4A1BC8}','{25339896-DB43-47f6-AAC7-33FB9ED7065F}','{D28FB8AC-FE12-4a6d-907B-3882C95BCE0A}','{D440CF4F-A7DF-4f10-9361-B7948090F8F0}','{B468A837-1FF4-4cca-8040-932830740626}','{3BAEE52B-9E5E-403c-B1D0-3B4E233A3813}','{5621CF8A-BF01-4dd1-A6B7-A55ED432B95D}','{C8FFD492-1422-4503-9A63-1D5A2D806652}')

I feel like v16 is extremely sensitive to wifi/network connection fluctuations, whereas v15 was not.

Has anyone else had this and did you find a workaround ?

Sometimes it is so bad it makes EA unusable.

Closing EA and starting it again sometimes improves things, as does moving closer to the router or wifi booster box, but not always as other devices seem to have no problems with connecting to the internet.

Any advice would be gratefully received.

Matthew

15

Bugs and Issues / Re: HTML Generation not Loading MS Edge

« on: March 01, 2023, 11:17:01 pm »

Geert is right - if I generate HTML in version 16.1, it loads correctly in Edge. Haven't tried it in Chrome.