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Model Expert Basics (7)

Table of contents

1Access

2Contents

2.1Package View

2.2Element Types

2.3Authors

2.4Diagrams list

2.5Reference Model Details

2.6Filters

Model Expert Browser

Table of contents

1Access

2Contents

2.1Package View

2.2Element Types

2.3Authors

2.4Diagrams list

2.5Reference Model Details

2.6Filters

The Model Expert Browser is an alternative view of your model. It is not a replacement for the EA Project browser, but is designed to be used by model managers, who need to see what is happening in a part of a repository.

It works for all packages in your model:

  • managed or un-managed packages,
  • or packages which have a mixture of managed and un-managed packages.

Access

EA project browser > Select package > Specialize > Model Expert > Model Expert Browser

Contents

To try this out, open the example repository, and look at the “Get Lost V2 – copy..” package.

Item Description Actions / See Also

Package View

 The Package view presents a browser view of the package structure within your EA model, showing all the child packages and diagrams.

Note: no individual elements are shown.

Different colored icons highlight diagrams or packages which are managed.

Un-managed package
Managed package, with the Reference Model (RM) that is managing it
A sub-package of a managed package.

This package is managed by the RM of its parent
Un-managed diagram
Managed diagram with the diagram type which manages it
List of checks performed on this diagram, each one showing who ran the check, the date and the score
Making a package Managed or Un-managed

Quality Check a Diagram

 

Element Types

 For the selected package, this shows all the element types in the package and all its sub-packages

Insights

  • Look for any element types which have a single count – this may indicate an error.
  • Also look for any element types which have the same type name, but different MDG names. This isn’t always a problem, but needs investigating
  • Double-click to see a list of the selected element type
  • Sort by any column: Element Type, Stereotype, MDG, MDG Type, #, Classifier

Authors

 For the selected package, this shows the number of elements and diagrams created by each author.

Note: this is who created the element, not who edited it last. That information is not available in EA.

Insights

This report helps you to see what different modelers are doing. What kinds of diagrams and elements are they creating? Are these the ones you expected them to create?

This can be useful for, for example:

  • Finding out who is not on the list, who you might expect to be there. Is there someone in the team who isn’t using EA who you think should be?
  • If you know a user is, for example, doing some process modeling, you would expect them to have only created ‘process’ related elements: activities, decisions, processes. If they have also created Requirements and Use Cases, why is that?
  • Does a team have just one person creating all the elements? Why aren’t the rest of the team using EA?
 Click on a cell to see a chart with more details, showing the element or diagram types for this author in this package.

Diagrams list

 This shows all the diagrams in the chosen package, and some details about each one.
Column Description
Group (see Actions)
Diagram Name Identifies the diagram
Diagram Type EA diagram type. If the diagram is defined by and MDG, this is not currently shown

Insights

If there are many different types ff diagram, is that what you expected? If the package contains information about Components, are there diagrams which are not related to components? Maybe those diagrams should be put somewhere else
#Elements Number of elements in this diagram

Insights

Big diagrams, with lots of elements, can be hard to understand. Those with very large numbers of elements might be split into multiple, smaller diagrams.
#Types Number of different types of element in this diagram

Insights

Big diagrams are hard to understand, but diagrams with lots of different types of elements are even harder. Consider making more diagrams, each with a smaller set of element types
Author Original author of the diagram. Remember,this might not be the last person to edit it.

Insights

Are the same people making the same mistakes? Is one person consistently creating big diagrams, complex diagrams, or even just empty ones.
Columns showing the number of each type of element in the diagram If there are lots of different types of diagram, each with lots of different types of contents, then there will lots of columns.

Insights

Click ‘Hide element type columns’ to hide this information
  • Click on a row to go to the diagram
  • Sort by any column
  • Choose ‘Analyze Diagram Groups’ to make Model Expert look for diagrams which have similar contents. This colors the list by some suggested diagram types. This uses the same algorithm as the ‘Create Reference Model’ function, but it makes no changes to EA.

Reference Model Details

 Opens the Reference Model details window.

Note If a package is managed then the browser includes its Reference Model

 Customising Reference Model Properties

Filters
  • All managed packages
  • Reference Models
 Reference Model Context Properties

Finding Reference Models