Model locked after trial installation

[Wolfgang Ponikwar]

Hi,

I have a fairly large EA model on which I am currently working. I have installed the trial version of eaDoX, started EA, opened the model.
Firstly, I created a qick document from one of the packages, just to get an idea. After that, I wanted to add elements to the model (i.e. classes, use cases) – but was unabble to do so. I could not add any element to the model anywhere, any package, as if it had been locked for modfication. I could not find a way to remove this lock, so I closed EA, uninstalled eaDoX and reopened my model in EA. Everything worked as before I installed eaDoX. I was able to edit the model without problems.
Any ideas or help welcome!

I am running EA 10.0.1004 on a Windows 7 64bit O/S.

Best regards,
Wolfgang

[eadocX Support]

Hi Wolfgang,
None of us have seen this error before!
Do you have any special locking or version control applied to your model? Or any other Extensions? Is it a shared DBMS or an EAP file ?
Are you able to reproduce the problem on a small, non-confidential model which you can send to support@eadocx.com, so we can reproduce it here?

[Wolfgang Ponikwar]

Hi,

there is no additional locking or any other mechanism. Just plain EA on a single machine and the default installation of eaDoX. I have no other extensions running and I am using a simple EAP file.
I just reproduced it using Excel export.
The steps are as follows:
1. Open an arbitrary model.
2. Create new Excel workbook.
3. Export some data (doesn’t matter, which).
4. Close the eaDoX window and open an arbitrary diagram from the model.
5. Try to add an element to the diagram (again, it doesn’t matter, which).
6. Fail – you can select the element from the Toolbox, but can not drop it onto the canvas.
Even if you close the model afterwards and re-open it, it is still impossible to add elements to the canvas.
Close EA and restart it and things get even worse. Opening a model (even a very small one) takes minutes, diagams open very slowly and still I can not add any new element to a diagram.
7. De-install eaDoX and everything works again.

I am pretty sure that I do something wrong, maybe I need to release some form of lock held by eaDoX (similar to the “F2” key needed to make Excel accept input), but I not yet figured out what to do.

Does EA write out some log data? I couldn’t find a file named .log in any relevant folder.
Could it be some .Net poblem? Is there a known conflict with some .Net version?

Wolfgang

[eadocX Support]

Hi Wolfgang,
Thanks for this.
I still can’t reproduce the error, following your steps, so perhaps I’m doing something slightly different to you:
My steps were:

1. Opened a model – The supplied EA Example from Sparx
2. Selected the ‘Modeling Basics’ package
3. Right-click, Extensions, eaDocX, Open in Excel
4. (big spreadsheet opens with lots of elements)
5. closed that spreadsheet – using the ‘X’ button top-right of the spreadsheet, above ‘Help’
6. ‘don’t save’ option
7. Opened the ‘Using the example model’ diagram above
8. Added and Activity to it
9. …all seemed to go OK.

Can you repeat these steps? Make sure the EA Example model is in a place where you’re allowed to do updates to it (that is, move it from Program Files to MyDocuments)

Please let me know what happens – we’ll fix this !!!!

[Wolfgang Ponikwar]

Hi,

I did exactly the same steps as you did, with the EA example model.
Still the same result. After step 7 I am stuck. No edits, EA extremely slow, unusual load on the windows kernel visible in the task manager (15 to 20 percent with peaks up to 50).

I am sure it has nothing to do with the model, since I was able to reproduce this behaviour with different models, some just three classes, some a full system with several hundred elements. The model has no effect. It must be something in the runtime. Are there any known incompatibilities or other issues with a version of the .Net framework? Or an installed Visual Studio? Or anything else? Are there any logfiles I can get hold of, either from EA or from eaDocX?

I don’t know, if this helps, but to get this effect it is sufficient to just install eaDocX. I do not have to create a Word or Excel document first, just the fact that I install eaDocX locks my EA installation.

Any idea?

[eadocX Support]

Wolfgang,
You might try this posting: this is sounding like an Office/eaDocX/EA interaction issue, which this posting seemed to fix.
See https://store.eadocx.com/forum/2-eadocx-queries/857-excel-interop-dll-error

[Wolfgang Ponikwar]

Hi,

I am afraid, but this did not help.
I repaired MS Office installation as mentioned in the post, but it had no effect, still the same problem.
Any other ideas?

Wolfgang

[eadocX Support]

Sorry about this…..
If you can give me all the details of your machine setup, including any previous versions of Office which you may have installed, then I will try to build a VM to reproduce the problem.
I need:
OS + SP
Office – current and previous + SP
EA version
eaDocX version
Any other EA Extensions you are running
Any other extensions/add-in to Office

[Wolfgang Ponikwar]

Hi,

next try.
Here is my setup:
OS + SP: MS Windows 7, 64Bit, 6.1.7601 SP1 Build 7601
MS Office:
Excel 2010 (14.0.6126.5003) SP 1 MSO (14.0.6129.5000)
Word 2010 (14.0.6129.5000) SP1 MSO (14.0.6129.5000)
no previous version of MS Office installed
EA 10.0.1004 (Build 1004) Unicode, Database Version 4.01
EA extensions: Screen Architect (but this extension does not load automatically) and SysML from Sparx Systems
MS Word extensions installed: Smart Tools Assistant (www.smarttools.de) and Dymo Label, a driver for a USB label printer.
No MS Excel add-ins installed.

Hope this helps,

Wolfgang

[Wolfgang Ponikwar]

Quick update:
I forgot: my eaDocX version is 3.3.5.0

I have just updated EA to build 1007 to see if that changes anything, but to no avail.

[eadocX Support]

…which is exactly the build of my main development/test environment
EXCEPT this Smart Tools Assistant.
Can you try un-installing this, and see if there is any change?

[Wolfgang Ponikwar]

Hi,

I uninstalled this Word add-in, but it did not have any effect of my problem.
Let’s try a different way. Which version(s) of the .Net framework do you have installed that you know should be ok?

[Wolfgang Ponikwar]

Hi,
I am not yet willing to give up.

Let me explain the effect in more detail.
When I said “the model seems to be locked” I meant the following:
I can open any diagram and rearrange elements. I can edit the elements’ appearance and pull in existing elements from other packages as links or instances. What does no longer work, is adding new elements.
To me this appears as if there is a locking issue in the model database.
Is there any way to get hold on some log or trace information on what happens in the EA model database?

[eadocX Support]

Neither am I!!!
Can you enable the eaDocX Trace function, then see if there is anything which eaDocX is doing at the same time as you are inserting your new element.
Also, If you create a new, empty EAP, can you reproduce the problem ?

• This reply was modified 11 years, 5 months ago by eadocX Support.

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