Messages

1

Suggestions and Requests / Re: Sparx - how do you prioritise new features?

« on: June 12, 2007, 02:38:23 pm »

I guess the problem with online polls is people can vote multiple times, but yes if it was only for registered users who bought EA, it would be a fantastic idea

2

Suggestions and Requests / Re: crappy UI or Why I hate EA

« on: June 11, 2007, 10:21:15 am »

Hi Aaron,

Thanks for that workaround, sounds good.
Also, as i'd mentioned, do you have any plans to add the links and navigational features in diagram elements?

Thanks
CP

3

Suggestions and Requests / Re: crappy UI or Why I hate EA

« on: June 08, 2007, 05:14:42 pm »

I guess it's a take it or leave it situation with EA. I'm evaluating MagicDraw 12.5 professional for C# concurrently with EA, and already threw out a bunch of others such as Visual Paradigm SDE, Altova UModel, VisualUML, StarUML, Visio, etc.

I have to say, by far, MagicDraw Professional wins hands down over everything else. The only drawbacks I can see in it are A) it's a memory dinosaur (more than a hog) because of grandpa Java..it takes an easy 350MB just while sipping coffee B) it costs US $900 for the Professional which has the code-engineering (only for static structure)..my current personal edition does not have it.

I'm in a haste to choose a tool and so posted several times today to get a response I think EA is good for Requirements Analysts more than Software Architects..i've seen a lot of praise for EA philosophy on the net but i think a main factor in that is the price..but when it comes down to functionality, some of the very basics for MDA and good IDE are missing:
1) when reverse engineering, it does not add a reusable hierarchy example .NET System.Windows.Forms.Form, etc. It only uses text for the Type property.
2) As mentioned above, Undo depends on your daily astrological forecast, and Redo is unseen realm.
3) Layouts no options.
4) Absolutely no links for behavioral diagrams from State actions such as entry, exit. Not even ability to attach behavior diagram to Class operations. This is very important to have an easy navigational map for the model.
But it does have the great debugging feature to generate Sequence Diagrams and go to source directly. All in all, not at all bad for 200 bucks, but if those above basic features were included, it would be the best and i'm sure they have it in the works

4

General Board / Re: EA vs Altova UModel + other CASE tools evaluat

« on: June 21, 2007, 11:35:52 am »

Hi Paolo, i guess the major block was pricing i was using the personal edition which is quite affordable at $150 but the prof version which has code engineering is some $900 and the software maintenance is 25% or so which is not acceptable for my company. I was just beginning UML modelling then, a couple of years ago, and did not give importance to code engineering...a big mistake. Other than that, a major drawback was the inability to Override/Implement members in child classes (in the Personal Edition)..i don't know why they skipped such an important feature, and as i've mentioned before, the speed and memory..i am not a big fan of Java anymore for IDEs. But if you can ignore or accept these, i think that it might very well be the best tool out there..and i'm feeling the same solidity in UModel.

5

General Board / Re: EA vs Altova UModel + other CASE tools evaluat

« on: June 20, 2007, 09:06:07 pm »

  well, yes they do, i just thought i'll try to get some people to tell me why EA is better before i make the switch, through some constructive criticism, and i've used MagicDraw for a couple of years until i hit a block, and don't want to switch CASE tools again after this..i get nightmares about it.

6

General Board / Re: EA vs Altova UModel + other CASE tools evaluat

« on: June 20, 2007, 12:45:01 pm »

yep, it is all about what you want out of the tool. I was really impressed with EA because it had all these features, but then once I started working on it, it just didn't help in "my" methodology. I want something that focuses mainly on UML for architecture and code generation. As a part of my methodology, I use the SQL Server Diagramming for Database/ER modelling and don't need to create entity classes and stuff because i use Visual Studio and .Net data objects. And I don't have much use for Automation Interface, Add-ins or Version Control in the tool itself. For all the requirements and Business Rules, I've built a custom Access DB which allows me great flexibility to organize and navigate, for unit testing and documentation I use other tools such as SandCastle and NUnit. So i just needed a pretty sturdy UML tool, and I hit the final straw with EA when i was trying to draw an Activity Diagram and the partitions were acting crazy and i couldn't even edit the text directly inside an activity, and when i assigned a State diagram to a class, it put it inside the class with all the contained elements at the samel level as the class members..these things were not making any sense. I think EA should focus on refining and organising the IDE first and foremost.
I disagree that UModel is a fancy toy adding to what softwaredeveloper said, it is simply very efficient and stable for whatever set of features it offers plus it has this useful feature of converting sequence to communication and vice versa. With a user base of 2.5 million, i'm sure Altova is willing and able to add all kinds of bells n' whistles into it..heck Altova needs to pay me for this..

7

General Board / EA vs Altova UModel + other CASE tools evaluation

« on: June 19, 2007, 02:24:00 pm »

Well, just thought I'd update and centralize my previous evaluations of EA from other topics since after more than a week of treacherous evaluations of CASE tools below the $1000 range, I'm beat but glad to say that I did not choose EA.
The CASE tools i evaluated were: MagicDraw 12.5 prof, EA, Metamill, ModelMaker, Visual UML, Visual Paradigm, UMLStudio, Visio, StarUML, Artiso Visual Case, MicroGold WithClass, and maybe some others. My main perspective was that of a System Architect for C# .NET base without much focus on Requirements Gathering or DB Modeling and more so on code engineering, IDE learning curve and dynamic modeling.  

Some of the main reasons i didn't choose EA are:

- it has really poor UI features  
- it is a burden to organize all those elements in the project browser. There is no Diagrams Window??
- at least the diagram elements should be contained within the diagram node itself, and it is plain messy to organize model elements.
- the undo is only scoped for the diagram editing and extremely limited and unpredictable even in that. There is Redo in the new beta it seems, but i doubt it will be any big step.
- hyperlinks are almost non-existent.
- partial classes are not handled well in code engineering.

On the plus side, it does serve as a great affordable UML tool for requirements analysts and has a bunch of handy features built in such as the DB stuff, baselines, debugger, XMI, etc. which is great for solo or small group of developers whose main interest is class and static diagrams and not as much dynamic modelling. But for system architects, it is not. I was initially impressed by its simplicity, price and huge fan following but it just has an unstable feel to it.  

So which tool did I pick finally? Altova UModel 2007..having used XMLSpy, i'm confident that this UML offering will grow to the same brilliance and popularity as EA even though at this stage it needs some facelift, but its features are amazing and seems quite stable so far..and the price..$129 + $32 maintenance.
Some of the great features of it are:
- a stable IDE just as XMLSpy
- Undo and Redo which include the scope of all activities within the IDE and not just diagram editing
- Big Plus: great code generation features that support enums, partial classes and nested types
- disciplined UML diagramming
- abiltity to easily reference C# code libraries and other projects
- great document generation
- intuitive UI without a bunch of unnecessary stuff
- great hyperlinking abilities and elegant organization and containment of project elements
- fast, slick, lightweight and stable
- XMI
- comprehensive help and samples

The other close contenders in order:
ModelMaker (lots of holes in code engineering), MagicDraw (unmatched functionality and stability but pricing and java are major drawbacks, i'd love to see the design model of this piece of art), Visual Paradigm (offers ability to generate code from state diagrams and lots of features but seems quite unstable and untested), Metamill (great lightweight tool but lacks a whole lot of features)

If anyone has any opinions about UModel 2007, please do share.

Thanks

8

General Board / Re: How do I set the Event Name for a Transition ?

« on: June 12, 2007, 07:51:00 pm »

is there any way to show the Specification Name instead of the Trigger Name, as in case of a Signal as trigger? A workaround is to copy the name, but this would not propagate name changes, etc.

9

General Board / Re: EA vs MagicDraw UML

« on: June 12, 2007, 01:43:44 pm »

thanks for that..i'd posted some of my earlier review opinions under the Suggestions section, and upon further analysis i'd like to say that EA has come out way on top in comparison to all these other tools that i evaluated from a Software Architect perspective:

MagicDraw 12.5 Professional for C#, Visual Paradigm, Visual UML, StarUML, ModelMaker 9.0, Poseidon, Visio, Altova UModel, MetaMill and maybe some others i don't remember.

A close contender besides MagicDraw where features + ease of use + pricing were factors, is ModelMaker 9.0 but its code engineering leaves out a lot of frequent things such as enums, nested elements and partial classes, and has no direct support for XMI.

EA looks like a solid CASE tool to integrate almost all phases in SDLC where too much complexity is not needed.

Update: I've actually decided to go for Altova UModel 2007 -> Please see topic "EA and other CASE tools evaluation" for further info.

10

General Board / Re: EA vs MagicDraw UML

« on: June 08, 2007, 02:39:13 pm »

Yes, this would be great since I've been using MagicDraw and contemplating switching to EA because of the price, MagicDraw is US $900 or so for the Professional with code-engineering.

11

General Board / Assigning behaviour diagrams to State actions

« on: June 08, 2007, 01:22:56 pm »

Hi there,

I'm currently evaluating EA, and been using MagicDraw for a couple of years now. I have tried and tried but not been able to figure out how to assign a Behaviour Diagram such as a Sequence or Activity Diagram to an action such as entry or exit inside a State, so that when I double click it, it takes me to the diagram. And the same for a Class operation. Is this a missing feature?
Has anyone used MagicDraw, and know what i'm talking about. In MD, you can link all over the place with great ease.
Greatly appreciated.

CP

12

Uml Process / Re: Windows Workflow anyone

« on: July 12, 2007, 11:48:32 am »

i've never understood the negativity towards microsoft..each and every piece of software or tool i've used of theirs has had a "wow" factor, been stable and reasonably efficient. Msft has revolutionised almost every stream albiet stepping over some intellectual copy issues take for instance visual studio .net, heck that takes development to another level. i've been using it for years now, and it's just amazing, and i'm familiar with eclipse and other IDEs, and now this new WinFx thing..you gotta use it to know it..i was just not able to connect the dots with UML MDA..Win WF allows you to create a complete bi-directional link between a WorkFlow (State or sequential) and code..i guess i'm gonna use UML only in the abstract requirements phase for Use Cases and rough diagramming..

13

Uml Process / Windows Workflow anyone

« on: July 11, 2007, 10:35:15 pm »

After a tedious research for the best UML tool and few years of frustrating UML Modelling going in circles, i ended up with Altova; and now i happened to dig deeper into the whole WinFX thing, and the Windows Workflow Foundation which is a part of that..would i be wrong to say that it is going to outdate UML back to oblivion? Some msft exec said that MDA aims at showing everything and so does not show anything in good detail. I've been working on the Windows WF for just a couple of days and it is an architect's dream..at least as far as .NET development is concerned..like they say "this changes everything"

14

Uml Process / Re: EA vs Rational Rose

« on: July 11, 2007, 10:39:14 pm »

hi zoran,
you might also want to check out Altova UModel if you want UML modelling more than requirement and documentation stuff, i decided on that finally..i don't mean to come here and promote some other stuff..just happened to see this thread..all the best