Mittwoch, Januar 18th, 2012 | by Konrad Wieland | Posted in Enterprise Architect, Enterprise Architect Erweiterungen | No Comments »
The Model Driven Generation (MDG) Integration for Eclipse and Enterprise Architect (EA) brings the modeling capabilities of Enterprise Architect to the IDE of Eclipse.
Editing your EA models is provided directly in Eclipse and, with one click, Java or C++ code (or also other languages) can be automatically generated. But also reverse engineering existing source code into UML models is possible. After connecting your EA models to Java, C++, or other languages, models and code are live synchronized. If you change your model elements, the modifications are automatically updating the dedicated source code and vice versa. Thus, a full round-trip engineering process is provided.
The EA projects are visualized in an own Eclipse view as depicted on the right side of the screenshot below. Next to this view, EA’s UML editor is depicted. The connected source code, i.e., Java in our case, can be maintained inside the workspace of Eclipse as depicted on the left side of this screenshot. By selecting a model element it can be easily navigated to the dedicated position in the Java code.
For more information including the installation guidelines and the user guide we kindly refer to the website of the Sparx Systems.
Freitag, August 12th, 2011 | by Roman Bretz | Posted in AMUSE, Embedded Systems, Enterprise Architect, Enterprise Architect Erweiterungen, Programmierung Allgemein, UML Simulation and Execution, UML mit Enterprise Architect | No Comments »
All the time the same issue: what window shall I use for typing code in the Enterprise Architect: the input window at the top named “Behavior” or the input window at the bottom named “Initial Code”??
To complete the confusion: the property tab also has been named “Behavior”
The property dialog has been changed between EA 8.0 and EA 9.0, the issue has remain. Summary If you want that EA considers your code during code generation please note:
- for class operations use “Initial Code:” input window for manual coding
- for class operations use “Behavior” window for linking it to a behavior only
- for state operations use “Behavior” window only for everything
If you want to understand the reason behind that, see below for explanation:
By the way, the AMUSE 2.0 (coming soon) provides a number of really helpful validation rules, e.g. in that case AMUSE warns the user about the code will be ignored by the code generation
(weiterlesen…)
Freitag, April 22nd, 2011 | by Richard Deininger | Posted in Enterprise Architect Erweiterungen | 2 Comments »
Last time I had to give a presentation, the most anoying task, creating the slides, was to highlight EA elements and screen copy them to Powerpoint.
As expected the many different screen copies where not quite aligned and thefore I got a “flickering” effect on my slides. Not what I wanted!!
Also the model I used was still subject to change. The next part that gave me the headaches.
All this made me think that there could be a better solution to this, thus the EAPresenter was born.
EAPresenter (current version: 0.9) gives you the ability to do presentations directly in Enterprise Architect.
Current Features:
- Dynamic highlighting of elements and connectors
(Borders and Colors)
- Scroll animation
(scrolls to a saved position inside the diagram)
- Diagram switching
(opens/closes when switching slides)
- Pan/Zoom
(Pans/Zooms the diagram)
- Keyboard navigation
(allows the user to use the keyboard to navigate throug slides)
- Reset All
(reset to original diagram state during recording/playing)
Freitag, April 15th, 2011 | by Roman Bretz | Posted in AMUSE, Embedded Systems, Enterprise Architect, Enterprise Architect Erweiterungen, Programmierung Allgemein, UML Simulation and Execution, UML mit Enterprise Architect | 1 Comment »
For the Electronics Fair Exhibition in the Hong Kong I prepared a presentation that explains how the toolkit we developed helps to manage the growing complexity in the embedded world. The solution is based on Sparx Systems Enterprise Architect, AMUSE and Willert Tools. Willert Software GmbH is one of the pioneers in that domain and provide Model Driven Development (MDD) solutions for embedded development for 10 Years (!). Last year LieberLieber and Willert companies decided to provide an affordable solution based on Enterprise Architect that I successfully present at the Electronics Fair Exhibition in the Hong Kong Exhibition and Convention Center. My colleagues from Sparx Systems Australia liked it, so I hope you’ll enjoy it also:
At that place I’d like to say a big thank you to Walter van der Heiden who allowed me to reuse some slides from his impressive presentation I enjoyed some times on the development conferences 
.
Please find here a video that demonstrates our solution for the Keil environment and ARM RTOS
Montag, Februar 28th, 2011 | by Daniel Siegl | Posted in Enterprise Architect, Enterprise Architect Erweiterungen | No Comments »
Geert is very well known in the Add-In community for Sparx Systems Enterprise Architect, lately we were wondering what he will release on his GitHub – now we know (found out by reading http://community.sparxsystems.com/):
To read the full story navigate to “UML and Enterprise Architect Tools open-sourced at GitHub”
Dienstag, November 23rd, 2010 | by Roman Bretz | Posted in AMUSE, Allgemeine Theorien, Enterprise Architect, Programmierung Allgemein | 3 Comments »
Lately I developed more state machines than ever before. In the past I had respect for that type of diagrams but now I think it’s just cool 
Why to use state-machines at all?
UML supports state charts for really long time, but only a small part of UML community uses state-machines on a regular basis.
My experience confirms that – it isn’t easy to start using them. The question is – why?
In my opinion, the reason is – the way how the people do thinking – in functions and activities (actually straight forward 
). Therefore most of us likes sequence and activity charts better.
Everybody begins programming by writing functions – first, you have an idea of desired result in your mind and next, to get that result – you program a… function. Other way around – nobody will start thinking about classes, instances, states, interaction between objects, etc. if you just want e.g. to parse some strings.
But one day you want to (or you have to 
) develop code in a more structured way. At that point machines can help
- Why? Because they get the object oriented methodology to the heart of the matter – it’s all about objects and their states. But as already mentioned above, at the beginning, state-machines seem to be non-trivial
– So what to do?
How to get the state-machine right?
Wouldn’t be great if an UML tool could interact with you and give you feedback while modeling to show if you are still on the right track?
– It’s exactly what AMUSE does. It extends Enterprise Architect to an interactive UML tool.
My first lesson learned with AMUSE
- First, install the tool – very easy
- Cause I developed state machines before AMUSE, the next step was also easy going – created a model, a view, a package, added an state diagram and drew a trivial state chart
- Next, I wanted of course to know if it’s executable – the first thing I had to learn was to add every state-machine into simulation window manually. Actually it’s annoying, hope we change that in the next version
- But already at the fourth step I learned a really important thing – every state machine belongs to a class. First, I thought it is also nonsense, but then I’ve got it
Basically it is easy and exactly the right way to think:
- So, you want a state chart? First question you have to answer – state of what? And the answer is – state of class you have to design.
Answering that question is the first step in the right direction of good design!
Bottom line
To cut a long story short:
- State machines are cool, because they guide you to a good design
- AMUSE is cool, because it guides you to a good state machine
- e.g. it creates automatically a class and a state machine that belongs to a state diagram if you forgot
meanwhile i came to the conclusion:
- Usage of state machines is probably most suitable way to enter into object oriented design, but they are also excellent helpers for experts.
Next time more …
Donnerstag, Juli 8th, 2010 | by Daniel Siegl | Posted in AMUSE, Enterprise Architect, Enterprise Architect Erweiterungen | 5 Comments »
We are currently very busy in preparing the next Release of AMUSE – most of the features are allready completed so we compiled a little Video!
Currently implemented new Features:
- smaller and faster Setup
- Single Step Simulation
- Sub and extended Diagrams will be opened on simulation
- Simulation stops if user switches Diagram
- improved external Reference feature (easier for .net implementations)
- Possibility to update Referenced (easier for .net implementations)
- Testcases can be defined via contraints and are taken into account during simulation
- AMUSE Addin Window in Enterprise Architect 8.0 is now dockable
- Toolbar gives for better usability than the previous context menus
It can also be downloaded.
We are still working on other new Features like the possibility to simulate Activity Diagrams – and a HTTP Bridge to connect Embedded Hardware….
Other than that we are working on a showcase for Windows CE and Lego Mindstorms….
