Undo and Redo

[simian]

I've just tried the evaluation version of EA. It seems a really good product but is ruined by the lack of fully implemented undo and redo operations. As far as I'm concerned, this omission means the difference between buying EA and reluctantly buying a different product at 4 times the price.

[thomaskilian]

Has been asked several times. Until now I really don't miss this functionality. Probably I got used to "switch on brain before using hands"

[jpeck]

and surely, your brain is switched on, you know exactly what you want to do and how to do it, and never make any mistake, and never experiment, or try to discover what happens by just trying it...   but as a new/learner to EA, and finding no comprehensive document of all and everthing that EA can do, I try and then say "oops, that is not what I expected!"

And then I find that Undo is implemented in only partially: some things can be undone, some cannot; sometimes undo leaves the last thing i did, and undoes something from previous.  So I expect to undo A, but instead undo B; so then I want to *redo* B (because I never wanted/expected to undo B) but there is no REDO!

This is a hugh incentive to claim that EA just is not ready for the mass market... and impression that you should be trying to fix ?

[sargasso]

Humbug.

This is a hugh incentive to claim that EA just is not ready for the mass market

Its pretty simple really.  Undo undoes things in diagrams.  It doesn't undo anything committed to the database.

This is no different to any other system whether or not that system uses an autocommit mechanism to alleviate the need for the user to manually initate the update.

Try doing an undo on the send button in Outlook.
Try doing an undo on the file action in Word.
Try doing an undo on the Windows OS installer.  (I know I have)

I guess they're not ready either.


bruce

by the way, what's hugh got to do with it  

[mikewhit]

and finding no comprehensive document of all and everthing that EA can do

http://www.sparxsystems.com.au/EAUserGuide/index.html is a good start - says Hugh.

[jpeck]

Ok, i get your point.
 (and don't get me started on whether Outlook is ready...)

Since my first posting, and my first experiences with the EA GUI, i've found more of the docs, and read more the forums posts about how it is hard to 'undo' when there are many database interactions.  

I agree it is hard. However, I have also built such systems, and although one must keep a fair amout of data, it is certainly possible to build an undo for such things.  simple proof: after using the GUI to cause some unforseen database action, I (as a human) can find some sequence of GUI actions to get things back to where they were (usually...)  It is generally easier for the program with access to the internals to recreate the state...

But we are missing the point: the EA GUI does not readily discriminate between things that are undoable and those that are not.  For example: in a sequence diagram, if i nudge a message up or down a bit, I can hit ctrl-Z and it moves back, but if i nudge it too far (it gets in front/behind some the message) then everything reformats and it is not undo-able.  This makes the UI frustrating rather than delighting; it breaks the "law of least astonishment".

In contrast, I know when I'm pushing the Save or Send button in Outlook; but with EA it not always clear.  

I don't mean to quibble about whether it is difficult vs impossible to implement reliable undo in EA, only to remind any implementors that this is a critical feature, and should not be blown-off lightly.