EA beta1 impressions

[SF_lt]

so, what about EA beta1 - there is no difference beta1 and later versions at first glance, so decided to play for a while and to see it in action

I wasn't interested in XMI 2/2.1, so directly went to class diagram.
Classes with multiple stereotypes rock, however attributes with multiple stereotypes are broken - only the first stereotype is shown, even if multiple stereotypes are applied to an attribute. There is still no better feature visibility control  - sad, very sad message.

Next I have tried to investigate metamodel section - class properties window doesn't pop-up when a new class is placed. Very strange, because in class section this feature works. Another beta1 feature

Also, after some time quick link has refused to draw any other link than dependency - hmm, hmm I said, it's enough of beta1 for me  

[Dave_Bullet]

The Visio import facility is great

Pan and zoom has some bugs (ie. when you click on autolayout - seems to get out of sync)

With the usual bug fixes like any product, I believe it is a solid "dot" release and worth it.  Thanks Sparx!

[jeshaw2]

I've been playing with statecharts myself.  The stateflow properties window is extended to include some new information.  I have not figured out what the difference is between the transition and transition name (its not documented and the UML 2.1 Specs don't help), but I seem to be able to get what I need on the diagrams.

The Bezier line style on transitions is nice, now I can draw curved lines;  however, there is only one control point.  It would be nice to be able to add more points similar to the "bend line at cursor" feature on custom lines.  (I like to draw little "S" curves.)

They have fixed the problem with self-referential transitions; I can make them big enough for the text that describe them.  That works real good;  the bezire feature is not working on this yet.

When I edit a statechart that already has some previously added transitions when I open the project, and then I close EA with out saving the changes;  when I reopen the project some of the original, unmodified transitions lines are lost.

So far, just some cosmetic problems.  I like the new stuff.

[OldSkool]

So far, so good!

I've been using EA for almost a year now.
As for the beta version, it has been a couple of days now!

The beta version actually fixes lots of sketchy behaviors and some "weaknesses" of the current 6.1 version.

The first thing that i'm really happy with (even though some changes still need to be done, in my opinion) is the new HTML Documentation. (We are currently working on a web-based software, so using html documentation has come in handy!)
It is really a good thing to see the actual structure of your EA project into the HTML. Thanks to the javascript tree! Now, everybody in the team can browse through it easily. There is one thing that should be fixed, if possible, in the HTML generation : hyperlinks that are linked to external files don't link to the actual external file. They link to their actual description of the element. My suggestion, the little icon should link to the actual description of the "element" and the underlined text should point to the file.

I'm actually testing the sequence diagrams and i'll come back to you guys with more comments on this one. So far, it has better behavior between element and is more easy to use. I still need to dig into it though!

Again, so far, so good!

[Eve]

Hi,

Most of what SF_It mentioned about beta 1 has been fixed in beta 2, including adding the ability to suppress individual attributes and operations.

With the quicklinker refusing to show dependencies, I don't know what elements you were using, but this will happen if no links are valid.  (Because dependency is always valid)

[SF_lt]

Thanks, Simonn, for the notice - I'll try to test beta2 ASAP, but that's going to be only next week.

The quicklinker "behaviour" occured, when I had tried metamodel tab.