Questions about importing file(.eapx) with Reusable Asset Service

[DanielEspinoza]

Hello,

In the company where I work, we have a couple of questions regarding the RAS (Reusable Asset Service) in Enterprise Architect (EA).

We created many solution architectures (Like 1000) in EA and we are planning to create one new file (.eapx) with all architectures in the company. Those architectures are going to be continuously updated and the new file will be like 9GB.

Each time when an employee wants to import the new file with all architectures, he needs to import the package(file) from the RAS. When this Happens, how does it works?

Is the old file with all architectures going to be deleted and then the updated file imported OR are only the updated parts of the file going to be imported?

This information is important for us because it will take our employees long time each time they import the 9 GB file.

Is there any other possibility to do this?

Thanks for your help

Daniel

[Geert Bellekens]

I hope you are not planning to create a 9GB .eapx file (which is basically MS-Access)

Seems that you are a professional user in a professional context, so I would suggest to use a professional database such as SQL Server or MySQL.

MS Access is OK for your amateur hobby project, but that's about it.

Geert

[Uffe]

Hi Daniel,


And welcome to the forum. Please note that most of us are not Sparx employees, just other users.

Is the old file with all architectures going to be deleted and then the updated file imported OR are only the updated parts of the file going to be imported?

If you use RAS to store packages (lately you can store other things, see below), and a user imports a package from RAS that already exists in their project, any contents of that package they've got in their project which isn't also in the RAS-stored package will be deleted. If there is content in the RAS-stored package which is also in the user's project, but which the user has moved to a different package, then it gets moved back into the package when imported from RAS.

Think of the RAS-stored package as an indivisible unit. You are importing that unit, and if there is extra stuff in your project that isn't part of the unit, it shouldn't be there and it gets deleted.

Is there any other possibility to do this?

Partial imports, where you compare your project's content to the content being imported and choose what to keep and what to drop, are possible using baselines -- but RAS-stored packages aren't baselines. A RAS package storage is more like a repository of XMI files, with the added bonus of EA tracking dependencies between them. (This is the key feature in my book.)

However, in the very latest version of EA (15.1), the RAS service has been updated to allow baseline storage. I haven't tested this myself but it sounds like what you're looking for.

That said,

This information is important for us because it will take our employees long time each time they import the 9 GB file.

9 GB is a massive amount of data, and it won't be practical to work with that as a single baselined package. But you said you had about 1000 different architectures, which I suppose means 1000 different baselined packages. That sounds more manageable -- as long as you have some way of navigating this set of 1000 assets. I don't think EA will be much help there, but just present them all in one long list.

HTH,


/Uffe

[Modesto Vega]

Both Geert and Uffe have raised a number good points.

A file based repository - i.e., an eapx file -  is not the recommended solution for the problem you are facing. In addition to the RDMSs suggested by Geert I would add PostgreSQL.

As Uffe has pointed out, RAS storage packages are not/were not the same as baselines. Although this has changed in v15.1 but I have not tried it neither.

Lastly, in previous versions of Sparx, RAS required a cloud based registry and only allows http/https or tcp. It does not support ODBC and, therefore, it is not the same as having a database repository.

It seems from your description that you are trying to either create an enterprise architecture repository or a repository of architectural patterns. If this the case, I think that you need consider
1) using an RDMBs (as suggested by Geert),
2) using baselines (possibly without using RAS)
3) how to structure the repository, it is not trivial