export/import of attributs & operations with eaXL

[Jörg Witzel]

Hello,
i would like to suggest an improvement of the new eaXL extension. At the moment attributes and operation of elements are not treaded as child elements ( In the UML netamodel this might be the correct interpretation). But the ea project browser display operations and properties as sub-objects.

UseCase: We use EA for datamodelling. But the departments we do this for have no UML knowhow. Thus for our projects it would be very helpfull if i could convert a class or list of classes with the attributes into an excel file, send this excel to the department experts for review and correction and reimport the resulting changes expecially of the attribute descriptions into the ea.

Regards
Jörg

[Adrian Support]

Hi,

I understand your Use Case.

We are keen to offer different options to output other information for elements, however one issue with Excel is that if we output information over more than 1 row we need to ensure there is a mechanism to ensure that we (internally) and you (the users) understand which element the attribute etc relates to. Hence the reason for including summary cells.

It is all too easy to lose context as there is always the risk that a user does some manipulation on the rows and the context could be lost – is this a risk that would be acceptable?

Other options we have considered is adding a column that displays the attribute(etc) owner?

Comments/thoughts always welcome on what and how you would like to see the information.

Thanks and regards

eaDocX support

[Jörg Witzel]

Hello,

> We are keen to offer different options to output other information for elements, however one issue with Excel is that if
> we output information over more than 1 row we need to ensure there is a mechanism to ensure that we (internally)
> and you (the users) understand which element the attribute etc relates to. Hence the reason for including summary cells.

My suggestion is to handle Attributes and Operations the same way as nested objects. I.e. you already have a mechanism to handle for example Activitities within Activities. To use row-grouping for the hiearchy was a good idea. The same should be done for Attributes and Operations.

> It is all too easy to lose context as there is always the risk that a user does some manipulation on the rows and
> the context could be lost – is this a risk that would be acceptable?

Yes. I think the “check-for-changes” mechanism (forgor the correct name) you already have is good enough to prevent corruption of the modell.

> Other options we have considered is adding a column that displays the attribute(etc) owner?

Yes – that could also be an idea. However such a colum should be read only.

Best regards – keep up the good work !
Jörg
Comments/thoughts always welcome on what and how you would like to see the information.

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