OpenEdge 10.1C Add-In for Enterprise Architect

There appear to be issues with 10.1C and EA. I find this very curious, because there were issues with the original FCS versions of both 10.1A and 10.1B, such that one had to wait for a service pack before they were useable with EA. Hard to believe they have done it again, but it is looking that way. Now, my issues are with using an OpenEdge repository, so that may or may not impact you.

The stuff that has been published ... I'm assuming that you are referring to Phil Magnay's things here ... isn't really version specific, other than the gotchas of whether or not EA and a particular version of Progress are compatible. I wouldn't hold your breath waiting for any update to those tools. Might happen, might not, but it is unlikely to be triggered by something like a new OE release.

Over the next week, I will be publishing a bunch of new stuff on OE Hive ( http://www.oehive.org/taxonomy/term/168 ) both on the use of an OpenEdge repository for EA and on building models of ABL code automatically. This work has reached a pretty advanced state now. There will be new versions of the Profile and stereotypes as well. And, if you are going to Exchange, you can come here me talk about it in session DEV-35. I'd like to hear from anyone using EA to see what they are doing with the hopes that we can build a stronger toolset together.

Hi Thomas, well yes, I do refer to Magnay's documents and slides presented on PSDN on this subject. This hasn't been updated for a while now, which is a pitty, I thought Progress had interest in the enhancing the EA integration, that's why I started this thread anyway.

We are not using OpenEdge as an EA repository yet, thanks for pointing out 10.1C problems with that:)...

Our interest is specifically related to the ABL and OOABL code engineering from within EA. Right now we are having trouble understanding how to model and customize certain OE objects (procedures/includes/classes), and the documentation available on PSDN is not very helpful.

I will not assist Exchange, but I'm certainly interested on what you will publish on OE Hive, and any information that you are able to share to make the EA-OE integration smoother.

Well, the work I am doing right now is directly initially at analyzing existing ABL system. In combination with Joanju Analyst (see a demo here http://www.joanju.com/analyst/demo.php ) we can now build a very detailed model of an existing ABL application, including all those legacy, non-OO features. The stereotypes you find there are well suited to this modeling. As documented in the project plan on OE Hive, we are moving forward from this to code generation and transformation. It is fine to look at the Profile and such now, but recognize that much of it will change in details over the next week, so I would wait until then to actually do anything with EA. Our slides for Exchange are due a week from tomorrow and should be up on the Progress site for Exchange some time after that. The slides should give you a pretty good quick introduction.

Our modeling in EA has both ABL (services as external/internal procedures, temp-table definitions) and OOABL components (DAO, DSO). One of the problems we have has to do with reverse engineering of .cls code, that is: we can generate .cls from within EA, but when we try to transform .cls code into UML diagrams the EA application crashes.

Products we have installed:

-OpenEdge ProVision 10.1C

-Enterprise Architect 7.0 (Spanish)

-OpenEdgeMDG (OpenEdge Add-In for EA date: Jan 28, 2008 OE10.B)

Any hint?

Well, you aren't going to like this, but my hint is 10.1B03. Basically, everything I have tried to do with 10.1C and EA involving SQL crashes. I have tech support calls open with both PSC (who us, we don't support EA) and Sparx, but I'm not actually expecting to find a fix short of a service pack. With 10.1A and 10.1B the FCS version did not work with EA and one needed to wait until at least SP01. I'm afraid that appears to be true again.

Ariel,

No update to the Addin/MDG Technology is available as yet. But I will be making some updates to bring the code generation and the reverse engineering/code synchronization up to OpenEdge 10.1C ABL features. At this point, I am unable to give you any indication of timeframe.

The problem you are experiencing when importing .cls files is related to some issues with parsing namespace definitions in OO and dealing with some non-OO ABL syntax. I'll try to fix these issues as part of the update. Keep in mind that the RE part the Addin/MDG Technology focuses on code-to-model creation/synchronization of OO ABL and not reverse engineering older legacy ABL.

I don't have any sense of the issues that Thomas is encountering when trying to use an OpenEdge 10.1C database as an EA repository as I have not yet tested this configuration. But these database issues should have no impact on the functionality of the Addin/MDG Technology.

Let me know if you need any further detail.

Phil

Phil, thanks for your insights.

> Keep in mind that the RE part the Addin/MDG Technology

focuses on code-to-model creation/synchronization of OO

ABL and not reverse engineering older legacy ABL.

Not sure if I understand what you're pointing out here. We are not doing reverse engineering of legacy ABL, it's code we have written in OOABL using version 10.1C and that we wish to model further on in EA. We are aiming at modeling our OOABL classes in EA and regenerate code whenever needed, i.e. the structure of properties and methods only, without affecting the inner logic of those elements. Don't know if this is/will be possible, for what we have tried until now this seems not yet to be the case.

I think Phil is just trying to be clear that his stuff attempts to deal only with the OO side of things where the map between UML and ABL is pretty straightforward. It is a different problem to deal with this kind of reverse engineering for legacy code. Fortunately, that isn't what you are trying to do!

My effort is at dealing with the legacy code. We aren't quite to the roundtripping stage, but I am very happy with what we have been able to accomplish in terms of creating the model from the code.

In terms of your specific issues with 10.1C, I would suggest back testing with 10.1B and then let us know what differences you are encountering. My issues with 10.1C have all be SQL issues and thus may not relate to anything you are doing.