Read packages from EA model without opening EA

[ankur]

Hello,

I have created an EA model with some packages and few UML diagrams inside each of them.

Using EA API, I have connected my EA Repository with Visual Studio IDE with the help of EA's process ID. Afterwards, I wrote a C# script to output the content  of UML diagrams in a text file.

I would like to distribute the C# script as a standalone program (with custom commands) to other people . An individual should be able to  generate the text file based on UML diagrams available inside a particular Package name.

An easy solution would be to create a meta file with all the content of the EA Repository and use that as a reference to extract details about sub-packages.

But I would be interested in knowing other possibilities to read the EA repository without opening an instance of Enterprise Architect and without using an intermediate source (temp text file etc). Can someone suggest some possible solutions to this problem ?

Thanks in advance.

Regards,
Ankur

[Geert Bellekens]

Ankur,

You an also open EA without actually showing it, but I'm not sure if that solves your problem.

Geert

[ankur]

Hello Geert,

Thanks for the quick response. Due to limited EA licenses, unfortunately it is not possible to have EA installed on all the requisite workstations.

Can you think of any other workaround ?

Thanks in advance.

Regards,
Ankur

[peterc]

Would exporting the package as XMI solve your need?

If your project is an EAP file, then that is actually an Access database - maybe you can achieve what you want be extracting the information from the database, but it might be hard work as you need to build all the relationships from the information in there.

[ankur]

Hello peterc,

That could be the last resort. It is indeed quite some work.

Thanks for the advise.

Regards,
Ankur

[Geert Bellekens]

Hello Geert,

Thanks for the quick response. Due to limited EA licenses, unfortunately it is not possible to have EA installed on all the requisite workstations.

Can you think of any other workaround ?

Thanks in advance.

Regards,
Ankur

Yes, the solution is to buy more licenses then. I'm serious, given the cost of an EA licenses that will probably be cheaper then you searching for a workaround for a few days.

Geert

[peterc]

There is or at least used to be a "lite" version of EA that viewed models but could not modify them. It was also free. So if the real requirement is to view the model created by someone else then have a look for that.

[ankur]

Hello Geert,

Thanks for the quick response. Due to limited EA licenses, unfortunately it is not possible to have EA installed on all the requisite workstations.

Can you think of any other workaround ?

Thanks in advance.

Regards,
Ankur

Yes, the solution is to buy more licenses then. I'm serious, given the cost of an EA licenses that will probably be cheaper then you searching for a workaround for a few days.

Geert

It's not exactly about the EA license. It is about usage and scalability.

Since it is an experiemental project, the future scope is not known and it is not yet clear how much people might be involved in retrieving and integrating the data obtained from UML diagrams.

Nevertheless, aim is to create a scalable solution independent of the number of people (EA licenses) involved.

As far as I can see, we might have to create a temporary read-only datastore (in some generic format) where all the data is available  and then write a script to enable selective retrieval of UML diagrams' information.

Thanks Geert for your quick response

Regards,
Ankur

[ankur]

Hello again,

After thinking about the previous discussed potential solution... it will be too complicated to work with an intermediate file, and it will not really cover our use case.

I need to explain a little bit more our application   
We are writing a command-line program (.exe), which will be directly started from external programs, among other makefiles, without the need to open EA because :

 1. EA takes too much time to start and
 2. we can not install EA on any potential PC used in our company.
 
 Moreover, our command-line program becomes several project-specific parameters which are dynamically prepared from the other programs, e.g. like a makefile does, depending of the project context, and its role is to extract specific data from the EAP-file - these dynamic generated parameters can not be known at modelling level in EA.

The command-line program just needs to read data - no model modification. It is intended to be used by System-integrators, System-testers and managers, which don't need (and don't know how) to use EA - this must remain transparent for such kind of people.

Only for the SW-Designers (who build the models), the command-line program will be integrated directly in EA via a menu / ribbon - so that they can check their modelling work output before releasing it.

Is there a way to use the EA-API without opening EA?
(I mean: not by using directly the ACCESS-DB queries)"

Regards,
Ankur

[qwerty]

Simple question, simple answer: no.

q.