MS Word comparison function

[prorock]

I use EA to generate a documentation. RTF files are saved as docx.
Document versions (docx files) are shared for team members.
When I create a new document version I compare it with an older version using MS Word function.
MS Word marks changed text as red. But I have problems with diagrams.
All diagrams are marked as changed.
Have you any idea? Do you use any other method to show differences?

[Robert Sheridan]

Once a diagram is released I increment the version each time it is changed significantly, use the diagram properties to get the version to appear in the top left.  You can then accept all diagram changes in the word document (I think you might even be able to get it to ignore them) and if people are concerned to spot changes to diagrams you can either manually highlight them or list them at the front of your document as changes.  If you use baselines you can identify changes from previous releases, but it is tricky with diagrams to filter out trivial changes such as tidying up the layout.

robert

[Paulus]

If you're willing to invest some time and effort than perhaps this might help (it's the way i do it):

1) create for each release a package in EA with the version number of that release
2) for each change in this release, create a Document element in this package, using as it's name the identifier that the development team is using for the change
3) drag this document element on each diagram that is altered due to this change, and in the diagram subsequently draw a dependency relation from the document to any changes in your diagram you feel should be pointed out, optionally including some descriptive text in the dependency in a distinctive color like e.g. added this class). Since you say you're using MS Word, i suggest using the colour that Word uses wen highlighting changes.

The benefits of this:

• it's easy to create a simple search script that will list all diagrams that have linked a (specific) change document, and this in turn allows you to create a RTF document that contains all related changes (thus making it easier to code/test separate changes).
• when moving to a new release, simply delete in the model all change documents in the release package mentioned in 1) => EA will then delete the links and all the dependencies on all changed diagrams as well, leaving you with a baseline for the next release!

Oh and btw the change document itself can double as the location to store additional information/release notes

 

Paulus