Messages

16

General Board / Re: When does EA ever say, "You done wrong&qu

« on: March 16, 2007, 04:55:20 am »

  Wonderful.  At least it would give me an idea that we're not riding out into the lawless Old West, with nothing to say us 'Nay' or 'Neigh'.  C is bad enough as it is (I'm an old Ada devotee), and we're DESIGNING the system with no reigns as well?   :-/  [glb]Danger lurks!![/glb]
I'll take your advice.
Thanks.

17

General Board / When does EA ever say, "You done wrong"?

« on: March 15, 2007, 05:00:50 am »

I have several techy words for it: 'controls', 'syntax check', 'exception handling', but what I really want to know is "How do we get EA to run a check on our diagrams ~PCLINT which will warn us of possible boo-boos (e.g.naming 2 different things by the same name)?.  

Notice, I use the technical term 'things' because such words as entity have taken on special meanings to some of us.  The sad thing about that phenomenon, is that those meanings are all different!!!!   so much for English as a requirements language.
[glb]Cheers, amigos![/glb]

18

General Board / Re: Forks for Newbies

« on: March 19, 2007, 07:33:25 am »

This is the curse of having first been a programmer, then turning into a Software Safety engineer, then becoming a Software process Improvement 'co-ordinator', then back to a Software Quality Engineer. We are usually hated if we are doing our jobs correctly, not 'right'..as that implies a moral judgment.
With their definition of 'forks'  would mention spawning processes equal to the number of forks.  Would make it easier for us to visualize.

19

General Board / Re: Forks for Newbies

« on: March 16, 2007, 11:35:33 am »

Application explanation:
If there are two forks, [glb]two processes/two threads[/glb] are spawned at the fork, and in our example, the orders are shipped and the invoices mailed concurrently!!!

I do better with concrete examples than abstractions.
Thanks to all, We're enjoying the snow in Boston, as with Global WArming, it will all soon be gone.

P.s. Did you know that flash doesn't work...the HTML at the top, next to Insert Hyperlink?  I thought it was because I nested it, then tried it alone and it still just prints out the flash commands.
Alice

20

General Board / Re: Forks for Newbies

« on: March 16, 2007, 05:38:17 am »

Just found the date of the User's Guide: 12/13/2006.  to clarify, that is the date the file was created.  The EA User Guide contains this diagram at EA.chm::/forkjoin.htm

So that I can be clear on this, is a join bar symbolic of a state in which the Action 'Fill order' puts the order there and the forking action 'Ship Order' and 'Send Invoices' have to acquire/request it??  It's a pull, rather than flow? No switch is needed or implied?

My references here say, Refer to Fig. 263 (UML 2.0 Superstructure, p. 340), The OMG UML specification (UML 2.0 Superstructure, p. 471) states:

"fork vertices serve to split an incoming transition into two or more transitions terminating on orthogonal target vertices (i.e. vertices in different regions of a composite state). The segments outgoing from a fork vertex must not have guards or triggers."
Tokens arriving at a fork are duplicated across the outgoing edges. If at least one outgoing edge accepts the token,
duplicates of the token are made and one copy traverses each edge that accepts the token. The outgoing edges that did not
accept the token due to failure of their targets to accept it, keep their copy in an implicit FIFO queue until it can be
accepted by the target. The rest of the outgoing edges do not receive a token (these are the ones with failing guards). This
is an exception to the rule that control nodes cannot hold tokens if they are blocked from moving downstream (see
“Activity (from BasicActivities, CompleteActivities, FundamentalActivities, StructuredActivities)” on page 328).

But UML 2.1 spec is slightly different: When
an offered token is accepted on all the outgoing edges, duplicates of the token are made and one copy traverses each edge.
No duplication is necessary if there is only one outgoing edge, but it is not a useful case.
If guards are used on edges outgoing from forks, the modelers should ensure that no downstream joins depend on the
arrival of tokens passing through the guarded edge. If that cannot be avoided, then a decision node should be introduced
to have the guard, and shunt the token to the downstream join if the guard fails.  See example in Figure 12.44 on page 342.

21

General Board / Forks for Newbies

« on: March 15, 2007, 12:41:29 pm »

Refer to figure 255 (UML 2.0 Superstructure, p. 335).

With respect to state machine diagrams, a fork pseudo-state signifies that its incoming transition will come from a single state, and it will have multiple outgoing transitions. These transitions must occur concurrently, requiring the use of concurrent regions, as depicted below in the composite state. Unlike choice or junction pseudo-states, forks may not have triggers or guards. The following diagram demonstrates a fork pseudo-state
dividing into two concurrent regions, which then return to the EndState via the join.

From the examples used, it appears as though these forks should require a decision in order to know WHICH state forks!!!!  There has to be some reason for the original element to go down one thread as opposed to another.
Please rescue me from this quandary.    I think we need the old decision triangle.  

22

General Board / Re: BUG: Parent key change NOT propagated

« on: March 15, 2007, 05:07:53 am »

Yes, ask the question, and take us through the path, if we say 'yes, to each individual case'.
AND, further, do as the CADRE's TEAMWORK wonderful family of tools did, before it was bought out and buried : Bring up little windows when we change one thing (upon request) to show the effect it will propagate, if all was right with the world (and EA).  TEAMWORK highlighted the effects on Design, Code and Test Plans.
McCabe's Family of tools will show you the change in paths, when you run one of their Complexity diagnostic tools.  Move up into the Big Time.  Show us what our actions have wrought.
An humble acolyte in the fields of learning

23

General Board / Re: Duplication of names for both 'state' and 'met

« on: March 01, 2007, 05:42:24 am »

Further analysis of the code emerging from this design is called for, to guard against the confusion of identical names.  Hopefully, the programmer did not carry this PERCEIVED problem into the code.
by the way, we do not use EA to generate code, nor do we use the Requirements feature for traceability since we have entirely too much many to one and one to many relationships between requirements and  design.

24

General Board / Duplication of names for both 'state' and 'method'

« on: February 28, 2007, 06:58:20 am »

   Why, when duplication of names is so dangerous, are we allowed to use the same name for a method as for a state?  And this isn't information hiding at work, since both are public.  Is there a GOOD reason for this?  :-/

25

General Board / Class Name on  ClassDiagram differs from name on S

« on: February 28, 2007, 07:15:29 am »

  Zounds: a discovery
When attempting to find out why the names differed: "CWU" on the Class Diagram is known as "CTL_WakeUp"  on the State Machine diagram, I discovered a field entry known as 'Alias'.
Unfortunately this alias doesn't get printed out anywhere that I can find, so when trying to match decomposing diagrams, it's difficult.
Could we have a Glossary that would include the aliases, to avoid confusion from having (seemingly) 2 names for the same concept?    

26

Uml Process / Re: Importing Requirements from DOORS

« on: July 05, 2007, 04:06:56 am »

thanks so much.  We learn more from one another than we ever could from folks who just know the tool but not our myriad set of applications.
But here's precisely what i want to do: I'm sitting in Enterprise Architect at a pop-up, one of whose tabs is labeled 'Requirements'.  I want to import 1 requirement into that field.  Can I do it with MDG.  Does this now become an external link from DOORs to EA (and vice-versa)?  Question asked due to vulnerability of external links.
thanks
We're thinking of using DOORS and EA across programs, as Engineering Best Practises teach us, but if there's too much trouble/bugs using MDG, it would be easier just to fat-finger the requirements in.
Please set my expectations appropriately.

27

Uml Process / Importing Requirements from DOORS

« on: July 02, 2007, 05:50:59 am »

I understand this new MDG bridge from DOORS allows me to import requirements into the field "Requirements" for the different diagrams.  Before I launch into this add-in, what can I expect.  The description says, "Import DOORS modules" ...I don't want the entire module, just one requirement at a time that traces to the modeling being done.
One more thing that bothers me.  You can download a UML modeling tool for free from Telelogic.  My experience with these freebies is that it means they're trying to launch a new tool and want us to be their Beta test engineers, which may mean that they'll cut out any ability of Sparks to import from DOORS into EA, a competing tool.
Please tell me what you think.
Alice, a new EA user: Do these add-ins work?

28

Automation Interface, Add-Ins and Tools / Re: New EA UI Plug-in  - User Group, Interested?

« on: March 08, 2007, 11:51:27 am »

When I mention 'controls', I mean as in rules enforced by the EA tool: When I violate a UML construct or rule, I should be notified. So far, I'm either perfect   or EA is simply a broad database that allows me to hang myself if I so choose.  To think of converting this to code with so many duplicate names is horrifying.

29

Automation Interface, Add-Ins and Tools / Marrying DOORS to EA

« on: July 12, 2007, 08:30:22 am »

  So, we now have the module in EA, and guess what?  It only imports the first cell in the table that's imported for each row.  OR, it skillfully hides all the rest of the info in the table.  And, since each cell in DOORS is an object, with its own Object ID, and the text is called 'Object text', that field should be filled, but isn't.
Do I have a bug, or am I not looking in the right place?
The larger goal still lies before me.  I have now chopped up the module into Views.....to fit each class of requirements in EA: So we have the Centrifuge requirements that correlate to the Centrifuge class diagram, etc.  But there has to be an easier way to drag n drop these requirements into the Requirements field in the pop-up for each Activity, Package, Diagram, etc.  The future of DOORS and EA use on this project is at stake.
We already fear that IBM will drop DOORS once it buys Telelogic in September (since they have Rational's Req Pro as a competitor already).

30

Automation Interface, Add-Ins and Tools / MDG Link to DOORS

« on: July 09, 2007, 09:16:36 am »

  I am evaluating this link for my company and have now installed DOORS on my laptop, since both DOORS and EA reside on 2 separate servers.  Now at least I get this pop=up:
indicating that I should be able to select the module from the Windows Task Bar, but no dice.  It's still not making the connection.
What has to happen before these 2 tools can touch?
Where's the support for this?
Thankx
Alice