Author Topic: Bruce Eckle's Comment on Ea  (Read 3291 times)

wmac

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Bruce Eckle's Comment on Ea
« on: March 10, 2004, 10:37:08 am »
Hello

Just saw bruce eckle's comment on EA and I thought it might be interesting for you.

Mac

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Enterprise Architect
Note: Only runs on Windows

A single-license desktop edition is 95$, although this
doesn't allow code importing (that's in the $149
Professional edition). Full information and 30-day demo
download at http://www.sparxsystems.com.au.

The Professional and Corporate versions support forward and
reverse engineering of: Java, C++, C#, Visual Basic, VB.Net,
Delphi and PHP, and forward generation of XML Schemas.
Forward generation of code uses customizable code generation
templates and allows creation of additional languages for
forward generation only.

A reader wrote: "Enterprise Architect is a UML diagramming
tool that also incorporates forward/reverse engineering of
source code into (and out of) models. It is an extremely
capable modeler, and has a very attractive price tag ($180
for the corporate edition, which includes secure storage of
models into SQL Server (or even MySQL!)). It is probably one
of the most active closed source applications in existence,
with updates coming out every 2 to 3 weeks. The lead
developer (Geoffrey Sparks) is extremely responsive to
requests and/or suggestions... several of mine have gone
into the application almost overnight."

When you generate RTF documentation from within EA, you have
the choice of setting the image type to:

EMF
WMF
GIF
JPG
PNG
Bitmap

(The reader comments) "... you can create incredible
documentation of your project with EA. It'll output all of
your diagrams to HTML with embedded images that are linked.
These web pages will also include notes/comments that you
add to your classes or sequence diagrams or whatever, and it
really does turn out very nice. They have a 30 day trial
download."

I contacted Geoffrey Sparks with a question and he did
indeed respond quickly:

"EA supports both .EMF (Enhanced Metafile) and .WMF (Windows
placeable metafile) formats. If you right click on a diagram
there is a Save Diagram Image to File option - under the
list of output formats, .EMF and .WMF are supported.

"It is also possible to create a 'Diagrams Only' report for
your model (right click on package in tree). This gives you
the possibility of saving out all your diagrams in one
action - in .EMF or .WMF format amongst others."

In a separate message, Sparks answered questions about
hiding class members:

"You can hide members based on scope in two ways:

"1. At the diagram level by opening the diagram properties
dialog and clearing the check boxes under "Visible Class
Members" on the right side of the dialog.

"2. For one or more elements selected in a diagram, use the
main menu Element/Set Feature Visibility function. This
allows finer control of individual elements.

"There is currently no global setting - although under the
Tools/Options menu item - in the Diagram page of the options
dialog - you can configure new Diagrams to hide Public
Private and/or Protected by default. Note this only applies
to new diagrams - not globally to ones already defined."

There are also pre-created 'Gang of Four' Design Patterns
available for free download from a third party.

Thus, it appears that this tool may solve my problems, and
at a reasonable price. At least, it seems that it will be
worth giving it the 30-day free trial.

My associate Jeremy also made some positive noises about EA.

« Last Edit: March 10, 2004, 10:48:11 am by wmac »

mcavigelli

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Re: Bruce Eckle's Comment on Ea
« Reply #1 on: March 13, 2004, 05:19:51 am »
His name is Eckel and the report is at
http://www.mindview.net/WebLog/log-0041. Thanks for the note.