Comparing Models

[Matthew Pass]

The company I currently work for has a strict review-before-checkin policy for all code and design artifacts. When creating a new EA model from scratch this is not a problem - people can review it, get it approved and then I can go ahead and check it in.

It's a little more tricky when I make changes to an existing EA model, however. Unlike source code, these can't be diffed using any tools that I know of, so I'm currently having to make little notes in a separate document as I work (along the lines of 'renamed x to y' or 'class a now realises interface b'). I can then present the updated model along with this list to the review team, and our process can continue.

What would be great would be if EA could make that list for me (like tracking changes in a Word document, I guess). Now, I know that any automatically-generated list is always going to have a bad signal-to-noise ratio compared to a hand-crafted one, but it's also going to be more accurate.

Alternatively, if anybody has any suggestions of tools that can be used to compare either EAP files directly or any of the outputs generated by EA, feel free to let me know!

Apologies if this has been asked before - I tried doing a forum search for 'compare' and 'comparing' but came up with nothing.

Regards,


Matthew Pass

[thomaskilian]

Some logging information would be really great. Even greater would be the possibility to have a replayable log. That is: I get the record of a days work and can a) make a change log and could b) apply the log to another model thus adding/changing models in the same way. I could furthermore think of some automation to populate models with these logs.

Okay - back to ground. A change log is greatly desired.

[KP]

Baselining and Differencing arriving with EA 5.0

[Bruno.Cossi]

And EA5.0 is about a month from release? Can't wait!

Baselining and Differencing arriving with EA 5.0

[mikewhit]

review-before-checkin

I have always thought this type of policy short-sighted, since you then do not have a checkpointed version under review.

If there are any issues, an update will be required under either scheme in any case, so why not check in the version being reviewed in the first place.

Then, any issues being raised are with reference to a documented version.

But opinions do differ !

[Matthew Pass]

Baselining and Differencing arriving with EA 5.0

That's great news - thanks, KP!

[Matthew Pass]

I have always thought this type of policy short-sighted

I don't make the rules where I work! Things will be so much better when I rule the world...

[mikewhit]

Thought I'd give you some extra ammo !