Business Rule Composer and eaDocX

[Igor Knezevic]

I’m using EA9.3 Business and Software Development Edition and eaDocX 3.2.9.10.

I’ve composed rules using the rule flow element and rule composer feature. Now I’d like to include this in the word document but was not able to figure out if it is posible and if yes how. Help please! :blink: . The idea was to be able to have a nice table to show all the business rules in readable form.

Thank you.

igor

[eadocX Support]

Hi Igor,
I was wondering when someone would ask a question about this!
It’s not currently one of our test cases for eaDocX, I guess because it’s not one of the most popular bits of EA, but when I last looked at it, it looked really interesting.
To give some ‘real’ test data, could you possible post an XMI of some example rule flows to support@eadocx.com? In the meantime, using Quick Document is usually a good way to let eaDocX do the hard work: it will look at your model, and create a Profile based on what it finds. It doesn’t explicitly look for Rule Composer data, but it should get you started.
I will create soe test cases, then update this post when I have more news.

[eadocX Support]

Initial investigations aren’t good – I remember now why there is no explicit eaDocX support for the Rule Composer: the data it creates is not available via the EA API, nor is is even visible in the raw database. It seems they may have put the critical data into a binary field. I have a asked a question with Sparx Tech Support, so I’m waiting for a reply.
I’ve also asked The Man on the internals of EA ( Mr. “qwerty” on the EA forums) if he understands it, and he’s also looking.
Perhaps you might also put a question on the EA forum?

[Igor Knezevic]

Hi,

Thanks for letting me know. I was suspecting that this might be a corner case for you.

I’m not sure if I can share enough with you without having to expose too much from the project. Rule Composer is relaying on class operations, business rules and rule tasks and in our model they are in different packages.

I also suspect that the intention with the Rule Composer is to be able to generate code and we don’t really want to do that. I will have to find an alternative for modelling complex business rules in EA so that they show up in the document in a neat and nice way.

I would appreciate your suggestions and if possible a sample eap that covers the topic.

Best regards,

Igor Knezevic

[eadocX Support]

News back from Sparx.
They have put the data into a binary field, in a zipped format, into the t_document table. Obvious really 🙁
I have asked Sparx for some code to extract the data, but they have said no.
I will continue to try to get the data, but in the meantime, could you put a question on the EA forum ? I think we should encourage Sparx not to hide our data.

[Igor Knezevic]

Here’s the post I made on Sparx forum:

http://www.sparxsystems.com/cgi-bin/yabb/YaBB.cgi?num=1365399754/0

[eadocX Support]

Thanks for this. In the meantime, I will investigate if I can extract this data. I’ve just discovered that Sparx have hidden some other stuff in the same place 🙁

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