Strange boundary

[qwerty]

I stumbled over a strange boundary I never have seen and which I suppose to be a placeholder for missing imports. So before starting experiments I dare to ask here first.

The boundary did not appear anywhere in the model on any diagram but had lots of relations to objects (which was where I stumbled over it). I had to kick EA (with a SQL) to actually put it in a diagram. There it appeared as dashed boundary with a whiteish color  reading External Reference Class (Body) inside. t_object.note for that boundary was "Name=Bode;Type=Class;" and NType set to 1001. Never seen that before. So see my above guess. Am I right?

q.

P.S. I'm suspecting the EA Package Manager to be the culprit since I could not create these with a simple XMI import with missing references. However, the way these boundaries appear make me think it must be something already existing in EA. It renders like it looks being intentional but there's no context menu to manipulate. And the API resists to make them appear on a diagram.

[Paolo F Cantoni]

I stumbled over a strange boundary I never have seen and which I suppose to be a placeholder for missing imports. So before starting experiments I dare to ask here first.

The boundary did not appear anywhere in the model on any diagram but had lots of relations to objects (which was where I stumbled over it). I had to kick EA (with SQL) to actually put it in a diagram. There it appeared as a dashed boundary with a whiteish colour reading External Reference Class (Body) inside. t_object.note for that boundary was "Name=Bode;Type=Class;" and NType set to 1001. Never seen that before. So see my above guess. Am I right?

q.

P.S. I'm suspecting the EA Package Manager to be the culprit since I could not create these with a simple XMI import with missing references. However, the way these boundaries appear make me think it must be something already existing in EA. It renders like it looks being intentional but there's no context menu to manipulate. And the API resists making them appear on a diagram.

Yes, q, your assumption is correct.  We have a number of these in various repositories with differing sets of interrelated packages which are moved between re[ositories.


Paolo

[qwerty]

So I guess you mean my first assumption with the ex/import. A colleague told me that the suspicious model was not touched by the package manager. Thanks for the confirmation, Paolo.

q.

[Eve]

It's only created by XMI import, where the package being imported has a reference to an object that doesn't appear in that package or the target model.

The idea is that it serves as a temporary placeholder until the package holding that object is imported.

[qwerty]

Thanks both. I had tried to create them on purpose but with no luck so far. I wasn't trying hard, though. Will look into that once more.

q.

[Eve]

Thanks both. I had tried to create them on purpose but with no luck so far. I wasn't trying hard, though. Will look into that once more.

q.

Create two packages with an element in each.
Create a connector from one element to the other. You can also do things like assign a classifier, add it to a diagram etc. Any cross package reference.
Export the package with the source element to XMI.
Open another model.
Ensure that Start > Appearance > Preferences > XML Specifications > 'Create placeholders for missing External References during XMI 1.1 / 2.1 and Native File Import' is enabled (16.0 ui)
Import the XMI

[qwerty]

That's what I did. But for sure not thoroughly. I'll try again later. More thoughtful then :-)

q.

[qwerty]

Aaah, that option was missing. Under 15 (and probably former) it's under Start/Preferences/XML... I never would have found that out of the blue.

Makes me wonder what people here are playing around with EA's zillion settings. If you ever mean to take the Enterprise in the name serious there must be a way to configure and fix the settings for a team. If anyone is not at good will or just hits the wrong key/option things are a mess.

q.