Package structure in EA from Excel with eaXL

[Guillaume Finance]

Hi,

I’d like to import a structure of packages and subpackages from Excel into EA. Here is an example:

P1
–P1.1
—P1.1.1
—P1.1.2
—P1.1.3
–P1.2
–P1.3
P2
–P2.1
–P2.2
–P2.3

When I run an import with eaXL, I get
P1
-P1.1
–P1.1.1
—P1.1.2
—-P1.1.3
— —P1.2
– — –P1.3
– — —P2
– — —-P2.1
– — — —P2.2
– —- — —-P2.3
I tried grouping packages in Excel but that’s ignored by eaXL. Is there any way to achieve creating a structure of packages?
As a workaround, I guess that I could create a Tagged Value and define a script in EA, but it would be best to have it native in eaXL.

Thanks,
Guillaume

[Adrian Support]

Hi Guillaume

I am sorry to say that the way that eaXL works means that what you seek is not currently possible. When importing a package eaXL will add the package as the child of either:
– the package if defined in the preceding row
or
– the parent package of the element in the preceding row

As the worksheet is effectively stateless there is no information (as present) that would indicate that a package needs to added as a peer rather than as a child.

I can see solutions that would provide this as an option but that is subject to a review and decision by our design authority!

BR

Adrian

[Guillaume Finance]

Hi Adrian,

Having the option to define the parent package of a package to be import into EA with its elements (classes, requirements…) would be useful.
I can see a workaround but it’s best for the users to have such feature native in the tool (eaXL).

Thanks,
Guillaume

[Adrian Support]

Agree – but like many things it comes down to how complex we want the interface to be. The more complex, the greater the chance the user makes errors that cause other problems in their models.

For example when we added importing of relationships we were very prescriptive about the format, otherwise the interpretation of the input could cause lots of problems!

I’ll discuss here and we will no doubt end up with a better solution in time.

BR

Adrian

[Heather Wallace]

I am intrigued by your (Adrian’s) statement “when we added importing of relationships”. I have just re-checked the latest version 3.5.5.and the user guide is explicit that relationships are read-only. Am I missing something?

Heather

[eadocX Support]

OOps. this has been built, but not release yet.
It will be in the next release (either 3.6 or 4.0, we haven’t decided what to call it yet)

[Heather Wallace]

Something to look forward to!

Heather

[Guillaume Finance]

It will be useful to import relationships.

Regarding the package structure, the easiest I think would be to replicate EA CSV export/import i.e. the use of CSV_KEY,CSV_PARENT_KEY columns.

See Using Preserve Hierarchy EA Help

• This reply was modified 9 years, 9 months ago by Guillaume Finance.

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