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RE: Bold to ECOIV

Jonas Hogstrom — Fri, 10 Oct 2008 14:50:23 GMT

We have implemented a couple of XMI importers/exporters over the years and while it is nice that there is a standard, it turned out that every tool we tried to import an XMI model from had their own interpretation of the XMI specs... The modeler i Eco5 is itself an ECO application, and the model is basically the UML meta model, so when the plugin architecture is done, it will be possible to write importers from any model format, including XMI. We currently have no plans to implement XMI support out of the box, neither for import or export.

RE: Bold to ECOIV

obou — Fri, 10 Oct 2008 13:08:01 GMT

For sure, by now I would prefer the same option available for Rational Rose on Bold. To be able to import on an easy way each time the model changes and generate the code, db, etc. on your modeller. That would be OK for us and, sure, for more people that is currently using Rose or another XMI solutions.

The MDA code generation support on EnterpriseArchitect it's not needed if the XMI import option is available I think.

RE: Bold to ECOIV

Jonas Hogstrom — Fri, 10 Oct 2008 11:16:51 GMT

In general, I would strongly suggest importing the model to ECO over writing a custom code generator for a third party modeler. The requirements for the sourcecode format is not documented, and contains some things that are really easy to get wrong (naming of association ends in reflexive assocs, handling of loopbackindices for "innerlinks").

When we have added the plugin architecture for the new designer I'll see what we should do about the Rose-import tool.

RE: Bold to ECOIV

obou — Fri, 10 Oct 2008 11:09:24 GMT

Thanks a lot for give us a solution.

For developers that have no Rose or EA experience, I'm sure your tool is going to be better, as is going to be tightly integrated.

The problem is that some companies that want to standarize on Model Driven Development have started with standarizing their modelling tool, and the current leaders are Rational Rose and SparxSystems Enterprise Architect. Also, MS is planning something on this. On those cases, a continous integration solution like the one we have on Bold for Rose is key, as inmediatly we can reuse our own models, and also continue to use it as our main modelling platform.

Also, I think that it's going to open your solution to a lot of big houses that currently are modelling using those tools and have no plans to change them due to learning costs, etc.

For Enterprise Architect, it can export to MLD files and XMI files, but also has a really powerful code generator for MDA that I'm sure could be used without modifications for ECO.

We can test the integration with Rose if you want.

Thanks a lot,

Oscar

RE: Bold to ECOIV

Jonas Hogstrom — Fri, 10 Oct 2008 10:59:14 GMT

We have an experimental stage Rose importer that we developed for EcoIV, but it was never released. Now that we have our own designer, we didn't have any plans to put it in the product, but we it might be possible to convince us to release the sourcecode for this tool...

In general, there are two different approaches to add support for a third party modeler. One is to do it like EcoModeler, add the eco specific codegeneration to the designer, and the other is to import the model to our own model-repository format and use the ECO code generator. In ECO4/VS, the second alternative was not possible since ECO4/VS doesn't have its own model-format and codegenerator, but this will change in Eco5.

Importing models is not a trivial thing, but iirc, the rose-importer (actually a conversion of the old BfD code), works fairly well. You could use it either as a one time shot and import the model to eco and then do your design in the new tool from there, or you could use it to import new changes continuously.

I still think the new designer will have significant advantages over any third party designer since it is build from the ground up to do ECO modeling and nothing else.

RE: Bold to ECOIV

obou — Mon, 06 Oct 2008 23:59:18 GMT

We have also software developed in Bold.

Due to that, we have a lot of models in Rational Rose, and we love that tool.
Is there going to be any way to easily use professional modellers like Rational Rose as in Bold, or sparxsystems Enterprise Architect ? They offer a lot of functions that would be useful for enterprise modelling.

We have used ECO with Delphi, and our main problem has been the lack of support for a easy use of one of those tools (the XMI import option was not working properly on RadStudio).

Thanks in advance,

Oscar

RE: Bold to ECOIV

Jonas Hogstrom — Mon, 06 Oct 2008 15:31:34 GMT

* In Eco4/RadStudio (not Eco4/VS), there is a tool in the EcoSpaceDesigner iirc. It will take the compiled model and generate a designtime model for it.
* The designtime model will be stored in the file format .ecopkg
* This file format can be imported into EcoModeler that ships with Eco4.

Send me an email (jonas.hogstrom@capableobjects.com) if you are interested in participating in the early stages of the Eco5 Fieldtest.

RE: Bold to ECOIV

ebiexperts — Thu, 02 Oct 2008 14:54:43 GMT

[quote]Eco4/RadStudio can generate a .ecopkg-file from the compiled model[/quote]
Can you tell me how to generate such packages I don't see this option.

The problem is that we have began the migration process.
When will be ECOV available, is there any beta I can use to do this?
Or can I send you my .bld to ECOize it?

Thanks for your help

RE: Bold to ECOIV

Jonas Hogstrom — Thu, 02 Oct 2008 13:34:11 GMT

I don't think that Eco4/VS has any feature that allows you to generate a model from compiled code.

Eco4/RadStudio can generate a .ecopkg-file from the compiled model, this file can then be imported into EcoModeler to be used in Eco4/VS.

The new designer in ECO5 will import models from both EcoModeler (including diagrams), .ecopkg-files and from .bld-files (Bold model format).

I would say your best bet is to wait for Eco5 and go straight from .bld-file to the new model format.

Bold to ECOIV

ebiexperts — Thu, 02 Oct 2008 11:44:15 GMT

Hi, Eco'ers,

I need to convert a Delphi 7 Bold Model to VS2008 C#

I used your EcoIICodeGen.exe tool to convert Bold Model to ECOII C# and it generates all classes well.

Now I want to convert it to ECOIV (Model or classes) do you have an Idea on how to proceed?

Thanks for your help, JP