Enterprise Architect

Posted by Thomas Mercer-Hursh on 29-Sep-2014 10:50

I would like to hear from anyone who is using Sparx Enterprise Architect in connection with OpenEdge.

I would like to know:
* Progress version
* EA version
* What database you use for a repository, if not the default EAP
* A sentence about what you use it for.

Please indicate if you would like me to keep your contact confidential. Respond publicly or privately as strikes your fancy.

This is focused on Sparx support for OpenEdge.

All Replies

Posted by bronco on 29-Sep-2014 13:01

We (the customer I'm working for currently) are using OE 11.3.2, EA 10.x (afaik), plain eap files and we're using it for MDA (well, we reverse engineer a lot as well). We're working with IMO, I guess you heard that one before. What are you aiming for precisely?

Posted by Mike Fechner on 29-Sep-2014 13:11

We are occasionally using EA (I believe we are still on V8) to keep a model of our framework code up to date.
 
We use it mainly for documentation purposes and every now and then to sketch a certain scenario as a basis for design discussions. We don’t use EA on a daily basis to design software (we have our own specific tools for that).
 
We’ve developed the process to reverse engineer our source code based on XREF and Proparse ourselves – and could also use that to generate code. We interface with EA using the .NET Interop classes. We can use models stored in EAP files (MS Access DB) or Progress. That’s not relevant for us.

Posted by Thomas Mercer-Hursh on 29-Sep-2014 14:40

My interest is in the level of EA use in the OE community.  Sparx stopped supporting OE as a repository with EA 11.  For some purposes, the technology of the repository doesn't matter, but it does for direct tool building that manipulates the repository.

Posted by Mike Fechner on 29-Sep-2014 14:49

Why?
 
EA provides a service. I’d always rather talk to a service that provides query and CRUD capabilities to the object model than direct access to a DB. So I don’t care about the DB (sorry OE folks) in that scenario. Isn’t that what OERA and also the OpenAccess SDK is all about: Access to qualified services rather than access to data?

 

Posted by Thomas Mercer-Hursh on 29-Sep-2014 15:02

You have a point ... but it depends on the service providing what I need.  I may have to go that route, but it clearly will be extra work.   I don't suppose you have any shareable code that would jump start the process?

Posted by bronco on 29-Sep-2014 15:06

That's the bottom-up approach. The other way around: what requirements have you identified so far?

Posted by Mike Fechner on 29-Sep-2014 15:06

A good beer next week may help me finding some ;-)
 
Until then, I suggest you read this here to get a taste of it: http://www.sparxsystems.com/enterprise_architect_user_guide/9.3/automation/reference.html
 
 
And if you insist on hitting the DB directly: As I said EAP is just another file extension for an Access DB. So you may try your luck with the ODBC data server.

Posted by Thomas Mercer-Hursh on 29-Sep-2014 15:12

I won't be in Dusseldorf or Orlando.

Given that I am creating tools for other people to use, I can't really build in a requirement for the use of a dataserver.

Posted by Thomas Mercer-Hursh on 29-Sep-2014 15:14

Bronco ... that is a fairly large question which I will have to defer.  I did it all once in the original version, but have just started working on an updated version and ran into this issue.

Posted by Mike Fechner on 29-Sep-2014 15:15

Hopefully a good portion of folks using your tools are on PSDN subscription. With access to DataServers.

Posted by James Palmer on 30-Sep-2014 03:32

"A good beer next week may help me finding some ;-)"

They have good beer in Orlando? Wow!

Posted by Mike Fechner on 30-Sep-2014 03:58

Never said that J

 

Posted by Thomas Mercer-Hursh on 30-Sep-2014 09:07

I think that would be a rash assumption, unfortunately.

Posted by Thomas Mercer-Hursh on 30-Sep-2014 09:16

BTW, the alternative would be to move to generating XMI.  I want to do that anyway in order to support other modeling tools, but was trying to put it off in the hopes of having something working faster.  So, the alternative to implementing the service interface is to implement XMI with EA compatibility.  That won't provide all the things a service could provide, but it will provide support for other modeling tools.

Posted by Thomas Mercer-Hursh on 30-Sep-2014 09:34

There is probably good beer *somewhere* in Orlando ...

Posted by Marian Edu on 30-Sep-2014 09:51

Now you start to make sense ;)

On 09/30/2014 05:17 PM, Thomas Mercer-Hursh wrote:
>[collapse] From: Thomas Mercer-Hursh
> Post: RE: Enterprise Architect
> Posted in: Forum
> Link: http://community.progress.com/community_groups/openedge_development/f/19/p/13134/47483.aspx#47483
>
> BTW, the alternative would be to move to generating XMI. I want to do that anyway in order to support other modeling tools, but was trying to put it off in the hopes of having something working faster. So, the alternative to implementing the service interface is to implement XMI with EA compatibility. That won't provide all the things a service could provide, but it will provide support for other modeling tools.
>
>
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Posted by Thomas Mercer-Hursh on 30-Sep-2014 10:01

Meaning you would vote for the XMI?   I had planned on tackling that in my current work ... I just didn't want to do it first.

Posted by Marian Edu on 30-Sep-2014 12:50

Well, if you don't like to do right things first go wild and fool around
with EA assemblies ;)

If you like to lock yourself to EA then by all means, otherwise XMI is
supported (both import/export) by all UML modelling tools out there.

There is a complete specification for this, have the XSD available and
you can do that easily using SAX from 4gl... you're going to use only
the class-diagram subset anyway (just model not diagram) so that
shouldn't be too hard to accomplish.


On 09/30/2014 06:01 PM, Thomas Mercer-Hursh wrote:
>[collapse] From: Thomas Mercer-Hursh
> Post: RE: Enterprise Architect
> Posted in: Forum
> Link: http://community.progress.com/community_groups/openedge_development/f/19/p/13134/47496.aspx#47496
>
> Meaning you would vote for the XMI?I had planned on tackling that in my current work ... I just didn't want to do it first.
>
>
> --
> You were sent this email because you opted to receive email notifications when someone created a new thread.
>
> To unsubscribe[collapse] from:
> - ...only this thread, disable notifications at http://community.progress.com/community_groups/openedge_development/f/19/p/13134/47496.aspx#47496.
> - ...all email notifications from Progress Community, navigate to "Settings", click on the "Email" tab, then under the "Email Configuration" section, set Send Notifications to "No".
>
>


--
m.edu
keep it simple
http://www.ganimede.ro
http://ro.linkedin.com/in/marianedu
medu@ganimede.ro
mobile: +40 740 036 212
skype: marian.edu[/collapse][/collapse]

Posted by Thomas Mercer-Hursh on 30-Sep-2014 13:04

My impression is that every tool has its own little quirks about XMI so that I am going to have to specifically support a given software, except by chance.  I know that I have had non-trivial difficulty moving models to and from RSA and EA, despite EA having some RSA specific import options.

And, yes, while the initial desire is only a component model, there is interest in some automated diagram generation.  Nomadesoft does this in their branch interpretation.

The XSD is at OMG, I presume?

This thread is closed