Exchanging diagrams with Visio

[Pieteke]

Is there any way to exchange diagrams (in casu deployment diagrams) with VISIO so they can be edited in VISIO ?

Many tx for your suggestions

[mikewhit]

The only structured model format exported by EA is XMI, so if Visio can import that then there should be a chance.

I note there is a Visio 'UML to XMI export' option - but where is the import ?

[Pieteke]

That is exactly my problem, how to import it into VISIO. Does anyone know of tools for importing XMI in VISIO.
Or does anyone known of an alternative method?

[mikewhit]

If the Visio users are editing the model, surely they should be editing it in EA ?

If EA's diagrams do not show what you require, why not customise them appropriately ? EA's RTF docs and diagrams could be imported 'as-is' into a larger document if required.

Why does Visio need to be brought into the equation ?

What can it do to a UML model that EA doesn't do - a copy of Visio costs the same as the Desktop edition of EA.

[Silly questions, I know: "Because our company needs Visio !!"]

Or maybe you should be working in Visio too, and not EA ?

Just making sure that we're trying to answer the right question ...

[Pieteke]

Context is, we are from the application architecture and development group and are using UML and EA for modelling.

The operations and infrastructure group has its own standard tools for maintaining 'their' diagrams (in case VISIO). From the architecture group we are architecturing with input also the deployment model, however at a certain moment in time we must transfer those models to operations and infrastructure.  They do not wish or intend to you EA (believe me, i tried to convince them). So we wish to transfer 'our' models to them, so they can take ownership without them having re-draw everything. I'm conscious that by transferring ownership and changing tools, we are losing the synchronisation, but that is for the moment something we have to live with.

[mikewhit]

In which case, send them the XMI, and state that it's "the industry standard format".

It's Visio's problem if it can't import XMI, not EA's that it can't export Visio.

Maybe they can then buy one copy of a tool to import XMI and export Visio.

Sorry, that's not very 'helpful', I know :-(

This http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/dnvisio02/html/umlxmi.asp goes the wrong way ...

If Visio has an Automation interface, perhaps you could traverse the model in EA using Perl or VB, and duplicate it into Visio ;-)

Or maybe use this http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=FE118952-3547-420A-A412-00A2662442D9&displaylang=en (Office 2003: XML Reference Schemas) to convert XMI into Visio using XSLT  !