Messages

1

Suggestions and Requests / Re: XML Round-Trip Engineering Feature Request

« on: August 05, 2008, 08:53:54 pm »

This one seems to have been outstanding for quite a while, but I want to back this one up.  A number of large organisations that I work with are looking at taking a model-based approach to XML Schemas, but round-tripping is necessary.  If EA doesn't do something about this, it could get beaten out for some projects by Eclipse (and IBM Rational's UML tools) or even Altova's UModel (which nicely roundtrips Schemas, albeit with a UML mapping that isn't as nice as EA's).

2

Suggestions and Requests / Re: XMI 2.1 support

« on: June 06, 2006, 02:05:53 am »

This is a very high priority for me too.  I'm working on the working group for the next version of an ISO standard for banking/finance (ISO 20022), and UML 2.0 and XMI 2.x are major requirements.  I would like this work to support EA, not just MagicDraw, but that will be hard unless EA can step up to the plate with XMI 2.x.

I should add that we are interested in full XMI support, not just support for the interchange format that XMI produces when you apply it to the UML 2.0 MOF model.  We want to generate Schemas using the full set of 25 parameters that XMI allows to configure how Schemas are generated from models.

Cheers, Tony.

3

Suggestions and Requests / Support 'Element' and 'Property' in UML profiles

« on: June 06, 2006, 02:40:20 am »

I like the UML profile functionality in EA, but I'm finding it very limiting because it doesn't appear to be possible to select either 'Element' or 'Property' as the metaclass.  In particular, 'Element' seems to be necessary to create abstract base stereotypes that define a set of tagged values that can then be extended to produce a class steroetype, an attribute stereotype, etc.

Are the full set of UML 2.0 metaclasses going to be supported soon, or am I missing something in the way EA makes the functionality available?  Thanks a lot in advance,

Cheers, Tony.

4

Suggestions and Requests / Re: CVS support

« on: August 23, 2004, 01:57:14 pm »

Additionally I'd like to have subversion  

Thomas

I would like to add a further vote for Subversion, now that 1.0 versions are available.  I find it much easier to live with than CVS or the other source-code control tools that I have used.

Cheers, Tony.

5

General Board / Managing XML Schema imports and includes

« on: October 16, 2007, 06:40:11 am »

I'm currently using EA 6.5, build 806.  I'm using EA to generate XML Schemas, and in particular there are multiple namespaces involved and multiple Schema files in each namespace (for modularity reasons).

The key problem that I am having is that, where my main Schema has namespace A, and needs to use definitions from two Schemas with namespace B, EA inserts two <xs:import> statements into Schema A.  However, Schema validators typically don't accept this, they accept the first import for namespace B and ignore the rest, which makes the Schema invalid.  A solution, in Schema terms, is for each namespace to have a separate Schema that just includes all of the Schemas for that namespace (without having any definitions of its own), and only do importing of those "includes only" Schemas.

That said, I can't find any way to get EA to do this, not when authoring the UML directly.  For example, it isn't obvious how you can set up one Schema to just contain includes of other Schemas, without there being a direct dependency on those Schemas that you want to include.

However, this isn't just an "EA can't do it" issue.  When I construct the Schemas by hand in the format I describe, with one Schema per namespace just for includes, and the imports only done via those "include only" Schemas, EA imports it perfectly well.  More interestingly, if I then export those Schemas, *EA exports them the the same import/include structure as they had when imported*.  So EA can do it, but what I want to know is whether or not the ability to set up the model for this is available directly at the level of the UML UI.

I exported the XMI for my model (after having imported the Schemas), and I see that for my "includes only" Schema, within the (package) <element> for that Schema, there is a <code> element with a "header2" attribute that the locations of the included Schemas.  How can I create that same "header2" value from within the UML UI?

Thanks very much in advance,

Cheers, Tony.

6

General Board / How to restore lost properties pane?

« on: June 09, 2006, 03:00:45 am »

I've lost my EA properties pane [build 790].  I may had accidentally dragged it somewhere (off-screen?), but it isn't there now.  It's selected in the "View" menu, but it won't let me deselect it.  Nothing I've tried has restored it.  Anyone have any suggestions?  Or should I just re-install EA?  Thanks a lot in advance for any help,
Cheers, Tony.

7

General Board / Re: UML Profiles / extending base set of attribute

« on: June 06, 2006, 02:35:46 am »

What UML 2.0 says is that you need a stereotype to get tagged values, but that you can define a stereotype to be 'required' so that it is applied to all classes (or all UML 2.0 elements of a particular kind) automatically.  UML applications are free to use this mechanism to simulate global tagged values.

So, EA needs to support 'required' stereotypes, and to support hiding of certain stereotypes (so that global required stereotypes can be hidden).  I'm pretty sure EA doesn't support required stereotypes yet, don't know about hiding particular stereotypes in diagrams.

Cheers, Tony.

8

General Board / Re: Does EA implement XML profiles?

« on: June 05, 2006, 08:31:41 am »

Sorry, I meant *XMI profiles* in the title.  Typo.  Cheers, Tony.

9

General Board / Does EA implement XML profiles?

« on: June 05, 2006, 08:30:54 am »

Quick question - does EA implement XMI profiles (i.e. parameterised generation of DTDs & Schemas using XMI)?  Thanks a lot in advance,

Cheers, Tony.

10

General Board / Re: Out of memory importing XMI file

« on: December 19, 2004, 01:39:24 pm »

I must confess that I generated the XMI, and I made something of an algorithmic error in enumerating the associations.  Once I fixed the bug, the size reduced from 280M to 1M.

That said, what I should have seen was a duplicate ID error, as many of the XMI IDs were repeated multiple times.  The out of memory error was a problem, because it masked the real issue, so it took that much longer to resolve.

Cheers, Tony.

11

General Board / Out of memory importing XMI file

« on: December 18, 2004, 04:49:31 pm »

I am using EA 4.10.736 Enterprise.  I am trying to import an XMI file into EA, albeit a large one: 280M.  EA runs out of memory during the import, but while only using a fraction of the available memory (PC has 1G RAM).

Is there any way to increase the memory available to EA?  I really need to be able to work with big models, and this is a real blocker.  Thanks very much in advance,

Cheers, Tony.

12

General Board / Re: Adding check constraints to relational tables

« on: December 27, 2002, 02:24:20 pm »

Ah-ha.  Worked it out.  The text of the "Notes" for the constraint is inserted as the SQL text of the check.  A similar thing happens to the "Notes" text for a trigger.

   Cheers,
       Tony.

13

General Board / Adding check constraints to relational tables

« on: December 27, 2002, 12:27:59 pm »

The documentation doesn't make it clear how to add check constraints to relational columns/tables.  I can create a check constraint, but I can't work out where to put the constraint test so that it appears in the generated DDL.

I am trying to limit a CHAR(1) column to take one of a set of 6 character values.  Thanks in advance for any advice,

   Cheers,
       Tony.

14

Bugs and Issues / How to save diagram showing alias names?

« on: January 28, 2010, 12:18:51 am »

I have a diagram where the class attributes have alias names.  I can display the alias names instead of the actual attribute names in an on-screen diagram, but when I try to save the diagram, it is saved with the attribute names rather than the attribute alias names.

How can I get the image saved with alias names instead?

Thanks very much in advance for any advice,

Cheers, Tony.

15

Automation Interface, Add-Ins and Tools / Re: Generate XMI package + profile stereotypes?

« on: June 14, 2006, 06:06:46 am »

Hmmm, not as easy as I thought.  Well, it is as easy as I thought for classes (use global tagged values).  However, I can't find a way to get tagged values for properties (attributes & association ends) to import from the XMI.  When I save a controlled package as XMI, these are stored as locally defined tagged values in the attribute/association-end definition.  However, defining them like that doesn't appear to work for import.  Defining them globally doesn't seem to work either.

Any suggestions, or is this something that simply can't/won't work?  Thanks a lot in advance for any help,

Cheers, Tony.