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Validating a Sheet
Validating a Sheet.
Here’s a video showing the User experience
Since eaTeamWorks 1.0.3, you can validate the data in a sheet against a Model Expert Reference Model.
Note: with Model Expert you can already validate the contents of a package or a diagram – validating it against a sheet is just a more visual way of doing the same thing.
To do this:
- Open a sheet on a package of data. If that package only contains elements of a single type, then eaSheets will also automatically add columns for related elements: this will let you validate even more data
- Click the Model Expert icon on the sheets menu
- If the package which you opened is already managed by Model Expert, the Model Expert will start validating. Otherwise, tell sheets which Reference Model you want to use to validate the sheet.
- Any errors in the sheet are shown as High, Medium or Low impact. Note that this measure is subjective: your idea and ours of what makes a specific kind of error high or low may be different. The severity of errors can be editing in Model Expert: see What is the severity measure
Checks which are made on each element
- The most important check which Model Expert can make is whether each element type is allowed by the Reference Model.
| Test | Explanation | Severity |
| E1 | Element type not in Reference Model (RM) | 10 |
If the element type / stereotype are ok, then checking the element:
| Test | Explanation | Severity |
| A.1 | Required tagged value missing | High |
| A.2 | Extra tagged value | Medium |
| A.3 | Tagged value not in allowed values | Medium |
| A.4 | Required tagged value is blank | Low |
| A.5 | Required tagged value has default value | Low |
| A.6 | Element is using an EA field which in not in the RM | Low |
Also looking at the relationships of the element:
| Test | Explanation | Severity |
| C1 | Connection not in RM | 8 |
| C2 | Too few relationships. this is usually used to detect when a required connection not present. That is, all the connections with a multiplicity of 1..*. This checks the lower limit of the multiplicity | 7 |
| C3 | Is the upper limit of the multiplicity correct. For example, if the element has 0..2 relations, does it have 3? | 5 |
| C4 | Incorrect connector direction. The type and stereotype of the connector are good, so is the element it’s linked to. It’s just the wrong direction (if the connector has a direction) |
- (5) Does it have connections which are not in the RM?
- (6) Are all the required connections present? And in the right numbers?
- (7)
So there are 7 tests. Not all failures are equally serious.
The most serious is a type of element which just isn’t in the RM. We give this a severity of 10.
For the others, the default severities are: