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Table/Matrix Presentation of Views in Sparx EA

Posted: 24 March 2010 12:43 PM   [ Ignore ]
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Hi group

I’m finding table/matrix presentations of views to be very useful, but I don’t think I’ve quite figured out how best to generate these in Sparx EA - does anyone have any ideas?

For example I think that table/matrix layouts of SVp-02 are supported under the TRAK viewpoints document - at the level of details I’m interested in (what functions might be associated with what roles, or human-human resource interactions) matrices are probably a concise way of displaying the information in the model. 

Playing around with the View -> Relationship Matrix functionality in EA 7.5 I can generate tables such as the attached image but it all seems a bit hit or miss at the moment!

Does anyone know if there is an easier way to do this?

Or, what would be the next steps to handle table layouts in the plug-in?

thanks

Chris

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Matrix.png
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Posted: 24 March 2010 01:38 PM   [ Ignore ]   [ # 1 ]
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The EA matrix views are OK but they do rely on proper organisation of folders (as they filter by location and type of object). They only ever map one type of stereotype to another so you cannot, as you say, get anything very complicated. They do, however, let you save the result as a .CSV so that you can construct a table in Excel or Word etc.

It looks as though you haven’t discovered the potted searches and, more recently, the scripts that are part of the MDG Technology for TRAK.tongue wink

- try the ‘Solution Interactions’ search. This lists, for everything in the repository,:
* source stereotype
* source name
* source alias
* relationship name
* relationship alias
* relationship type
* relationship description
* direction
* target name
* target stereotype
* target alias

and selects ResourceInteractions and PortConnections.

It isn’t everything you’d want but I haven’t figured out the SQL to do what I really want yet!

As the above works across everything thing in the repository I’ve also added a handful of scripts which provide results for the selected view in the project browser.

Of interest here is:
- Selected Diagram - Partial SV-02

which lists:
* Source
* Source Type
* relationship (type)
* direction
* relationship name
* relationship alias
* relationship description
* destination
* destination type
* visibility

the last column is needed because this script will produce a table of both visible and hidden relationships for the objects on the selected view.

There is also an ‘All Relationships’ version although you need to be careful when reading ‘hasPart’ since the reading direction is in the opposite sense to the relationship direction (the diamond is equivalent to the arrow head in UML). I am working on a form that allows for this and generates a set of statements about the objects on the selected diagram.

The downside to scripts and searches in EA is that they don’t generate a CSV file - you have to cut and paste from the search results into a text editor do multiple search & replaces to get something that works. This an EA limitation/inconsistency.

 

 

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SolutionInteractionsSearch2.jpgSV-02Partial_Script.jpg
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Posted: 24 March 2010 02:57 PM   [ Ignore ]   [ # 2 ]
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The set of statements (subject - predicate - object) version is attached. The intent is to find a way of extracting a set of almost-proper english statements that the view describes graphically.

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Posted: 25 March 2010 10:32 AM   [ Ignore ]   [ # 3 ]
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Thanks - the searches seem to do a lot of what I’m after (see image) - through this you can get a nice grouped list of resource interactions.

(The follow-on question here is how to best represent the information flow / interaction elements; probably a topic for a different thread)

Ta

Chris

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groupedlist.jpg
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Posted: 25 March 2010 11:29 AM   [ Ignore ]   [ # 4 ]
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It’s really just a case of figuring out the SQL statement needed to do this i.e. time. If anyone wants to take this on I’d love them to bits!

In the meantime it’s a combination approach - use the current searches to produce a table and manually add the Items or Interaction Elements to the appropriate row.

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Posted: 31 March 2010 08:01 PM   [ Ignore ]   [ # 5 ]
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In the latest release of the MDG Technology for TRAK - Version 0.103 - the table-generating scripts now also send the output as a comma-separated stream to the Script pane in Sparx EA. From this you can select the output and generate a CSV file directly from which a table can be created. Although a workaround for the lack of a direct ‘Save as CSV’ from an EA search, it’s a lot easier than it was.

There is a page on the MDG for TRAK wiki that explains how to do this.

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