How to get your EA models ready for Sparx Systems Prolaborate
To make the most of Prolaborate it's a good idea to start by doing some housekeeping
Find and Fix
Hands up if your model is perfect… Completely consistent, 100% organized, no errors…
If that’s you, congratulations. I suspect you can say yes because the model is 100% yours. But what if there are some packages which aren’t quite so presentable?
You know which bits are important and which to ignore or avoid. Maybe some are deliberately incomplete. Maybe they were just some ideas you were kicking around. Maybe you started something then got distracted and it was never completed. If all the modeling is yours then it’s straightforward to find those bits and fix them before they see the light of day. But what if there are lots of modelers? Trawling through everything to find other people’s silly errors is boring and time-consuming.
That’s where the “find and fix” features of Model Expert can help.
Using the Package Dashboard
Some errors are easy to find. Simply select a package and generate the Model Expert dashboard. This single page view shows all the element types, connector types and diagrams in the package – as well as who created them.
It also shows where there are duplicate elements, orphan elements, empty diagrams and empty packages. Navigate straight to them to find and fix.
To find inconsistent connector or element types, open the meta-model view. This shows which element and connector stereotypes have been used, and how they are connected.
Using a Reference Model
It’s easy to find and fix common errors using the dashboard and meta model views, but you may need to make extra checks to confirm that your team modeling standards have been met. To make these checks, create one or more Reference models for the packages in your model.
Reference models define the element and connector stereotypes that are allowed, plus the multiplicity and direction of all connectors, and any attributes and tagged values that must be included. You can also create Reference diagrams which define exactly which content is allowed in each diagram type. Then by comparing packages and diagrams with your reference modeling, Model Expert produces a diagram or list of violations.
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