Attribute Constraints

[AlanH]

Firstly, let me say that I really like this tool... I used to sell full life cycle CASE tools back in the early 90's (when they were the vogue) and have used many since (incl: Rational Rose & Systems Architect)... The past 10 years ERWIN has been my tool of choice for data modelling and amazingly it has stood the test of time despite being taken up by CA... understand they are putting some process modelling capability and maybe one day an 'undo' function....

I have hit a snag with EA in trying to produce an RTF document listing attributes with constraints... the constraint entries come up as {FeatConstraint.Name}, {FeatConstraint.Type} , {FeatConstraint.Notes} but the content fails to show in the report... can anyone help?

Al

[susanne]

Same problem here. I included the same tags in my templates and the documentation that comes out looks good for some packages and merely the tag is printed for other packages. I'm really puzzled about this. Suggestions of any kind are very welcome

[AlanH]

Hi... I posted this a while back and have since recreated the reports and the problem seemed to go away... I was using a 'fudge' to trace multiple source column mappings to a target logical enterprise data model (for a NSW Education). I was using the constraints as a way of tracing the various sources, tables, column names & data types...

It was possible to do a high level trace diagrammatically at the Class/Table level using trace relationships...  but there was no way to trace and report at the attribute level...

So I am quite happy that I can now produce documents that give a complete report of each source column used to produce the integrated model.

My suggestion to you, is to create a new report and try again, sometimes the RTF generator, seems to get it's parameters in a knot...

not sure how though, everything looks OK on the surface, but under the covers, it seems to lose something...

And I'm not talking virginity here

hope this helps..

[susanne]

The strange thing to me is that after doing some trial and error, I found out that it works perfectly normal when I generate documentation of large packages. If I however kick out some elements out of the same package, it doesn't work anymore.......
Strange....
Anyways, thanks for the advice to recreate the template. Hope that it works

[«Midnight»]

Please let us know what does happen. If it does not work, please submit this in a bug report to Sparx, as there is clearly something amiss.

David

[cuninghamd]

susanne, alanH,
 I too have a need for a way to trace at the attribute level - e.g. from domain model to logical model to data model and came across your post. Could you please elaborate the way in which you are managing this please ?

Ideally I'l like to be able to have trace relationships at the attribute level but that does not seem possible.

Thanks,
Dave.

[susanne]

Dave,
That's true, it is not possible to trace relationships at an attribute level.

My colleague told me that in the newest version of EA, it is not possible anymore to enter constraints for attributes.
Our solution now is to include the constraints in the notes of the attribute....

Susanne

[«Midnight»]

...My colleague told me that in the newest version of EA, it is not possible anymore to enter constraints for attributes...

I just checked this in build 817. I have no problem adding a constraint to an attribute. This is (still) done through the constraint tab on the Attributes dialog. Remember to save a new attribute before you attempt to add the first constraint.

David

[cuninghamd]

David, Susanne,
  Thanks for your posts, I have checked my version (816) and you can add constraints to attbibutes. However - I'm unsure how this will help me in mapping the selected attribute to another attribute. It seems to me that it would just be additional text with no binding - so could rapidly become wrong if things changed.

Forgive me if I have got the wrong end of the stick on this !

Dave.

[peter.zrnko]

It's possible to reference elements (classifiers) by using special tags. Unfortunately it's not possible to reference attributes in the same way.

Ability to reference attributes would be a nice tool to describing attribute mapping. But this is something for the suggestions section.

[cuninghamd]

Peter,
 Thanks for the post - I'll post a topic in the suggestions. Has anyone got a idea how it may be accpmplished / workaround - any pointers would be helpful

Thanks again,

Dave.

[AlanH]

Hi guys,

I managed to come up with an obvious fudge (retrospectively) for attribute mapping and this consists of creating a 'Mapping Class" with traceability links between the Source Class/Table and the Target Class/Table.

Since EA supports both Attribute and Column definitions in the same Class - it is possible to drag both source and target attributes/columns into a seperate class and position them one after another in sequence,
eg:
source: SURNAME
Target: family name
Source: FIRST_NAMES
Target: given names
etc...

The beauty of this approach is the mapping is graphical and mapping ( and transformation) rules can be added to the class as operations/methods as required.

If you need any further detail on this, let me know....

regards

Al

[Eve]

It's possible to reference elements (classifiers) by using special tags. Unfortunately it's not possible to reference attributes in the same way.

Ability to reference attributes would be a nice tool to describing attribute mapping. But this is something for the suggestions section.

It is possible to reference an attribute with a tagged value.  Create a predefined tagged value with the following.

Type=RefGUID;
Values=Attribute;

[peter.zrnko]

It's nice.

And when I create such a Tagged value and set it to an attribute, is it possible to see somewhere to which class this attribute belongs?

Or is it necessary to create another tagged value with reference to the Class and maintain this Class and Attribute pair myself?