Import attributes on empty classes from Excel

[Guillaume Finance]

Hi,
I’m looking for a way with eaXL to import attributes on “empty classes” i.e. that do not currently have any attribute. eaXL currently requires to run an export from EA with classes that have at least one attribute. It is then possible to add new attributes for each class underneath before importing into EA.

Is there any way to set up an Excel template on which we can provide the class name + element ID for which eaXL will generate a new attribute with the given properties (name, type…) ?

thanks

[Adrian Support]

Hi

What you seek is not yet possible.

When we looked at including the ability to add attributes/operations to classes the concern we had was that class names were not necessarily unique and there was a risk that of them being assigned to the wrong class. OK – a low risk but then trying to be cautious here, so our decision was to ensure we had a reference point and hence the need to use an initial export of an attribute from the relevant classes.

We are currently looking at a range of additions to eaXL including the ability to imported attributes/operations etc which would not require the initial export. The challenge for us is to select the most representative use cases. In your case, you state that you have the element ID as well as the name and that would work fine, for others this may not be the case.

We are consolidating feedback and hope to come up with a workable solution(s) for all.

Adrian
eaDocX support

[Guillaume Finance]

Hi Adrian,

I managed in the meantime to identify additional steps to generate “dummy attributes” via a script so I can export all classes and add new attributes in the Excel spreadsheet.
Maybe you could generate such attributes on the fly (and delete them after the export) ?

A few suggestions when you consider this enhancement :
– could you add support of the attributes Tagged Values for the export to Excel (import by manually adding TV columns work) ?
– could you format with a different colour columns that are solely for export purposes? e.g. I don’t think columns like Path, Name + Description are used when importing into EA, hence it would be useful to see those that don’t need to be populated.

thanks
Guillaume

[Author]

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