Testing in Python – My first steps with pytest
Recently I started developing in python (v3.8) as one of our customers asked me to implement some functionality based on a code base which is written in python. First of […]
ISTQB Foundation Level 2018 Certification
Recently I decided to do another certification. Since I was able to gain some experience in the context of testing in the last years and because testing is an interesting and important topic, I decided to go for a foundation level certification in testing. ISTQB (International Software Testing Qualifications Board) is a global provider of such certifications. The Foundation Level […]
Converting Sparx Enterprise Architect Baseline Information from XML into C# objects
In this post I will show you how to easily work with Sparx Enterprise Architect Baseline information in C#. Baseline processing in Enterprise Architect is exposed via the ProjectClass (EA.Repository.GetProjectInterface()). […]
[NoBrainer] Simplifying and Speeding Up Testing in Sparx Enterprise Architect
Today’s post will be rather quick. I will show you how a unit/integration test class that can interact with real model data in Sparx Enterprise Architect. Beyond the well known Interop.EA assembly there is another assembly called SparxSystems.Repository that provides the intersting feature to connect to a running EA instance: Services.GetRepository(). We can use this to write unit/integration tests that […]
Dynamically registering UserControls in Sparx Enterprise Architect AddIns for showing them with Repository.AddTab
Sparx Enterprise Architect provides a means for AddIns to display Windows via Repository.AddTab() which are based on System.Windows.Forms.UserControl. However the call AddTab expects a name for the actual tab and a PROGID. EA actually takes this PROGID and loads the UserControl via the registry (as it is actually an Active COM Control). In this post I show you how these […]
Improvements on the SqlXmlSerialiser
This is a followup to the last article Easy Conversion from Enterprise Architect XML SQL Queries to C# Objects. Every time we execute a query that returns results from more than one table we have to use aliasing in the SQL statement to differentiate columns with the same name. See below a query that retrieves all connectors of an element […]
Easy Conversion from Enterprise Architect XML SQL Queries to C# Objects
In this article I show you how to easily convert arbitrary SQL query results in Enterprise Architect to native C# objects. The Enterprise Architect object model provides several methods which you can use to make direct SQL queries against the underlying database. And while Repository.GetElementSet really returns a Collection of native EA.Elements (but not connectors) the more versatile Repository.SQLQuery only […]
Using Enterprise Architect Add-In Search Methods with XmlSerializer
Sparx Systems Enterprise Architect supports the extension of the built-in search functionality by creating search queries with add-ins called Add-In Search. In this article I show you how to create […]
WPF Series -13- Advanced Installer
The last post in this series deals with the packaging of a WPF application. To simplify the installation of our WPF application we decided to package the application as MSI […]
WPF Series -12- Global Exception Logging
During development and debugging of our WPF application some exceptions occurred which were not caught by the code. Such unhandled exceptions are not logged automatically. In order to obtain information about any unhandled exceptions in production and to simplify error analysis, we looked for a way to handle and log unhandled exceptions. After some research we ended up with the […]
WPF Series -11- Custom MetroDialog
After a long break it’s finally time to continue with the WPF series. Today I’ll show you how we implemented a custom metro dialog. Our dialog contains 2 comboboxes and […]
[HOWTO] Create Enterprise Architect Stereotype Reference Data using PowerShell
This is a follow-up to the blog post [HOWTO] Convert Images to Enterprise Architect Model Images. As already described there, we wanted to use the official cisco network topology icons […]
[HOWTO] Convert Images to Enterprise Architect Model Images
We wanted to use the official cisco network topology icons (B/W: EPS (7.6 MB) | JPG (4 MB)) in Enterprise Architect to associate them with elements. To avoid importing these […]
[NoBrainer] Simplifying Sparx Enterprise Architect Development with C# Interactive (CSI)
Developing an AddIn for Sparx Enterprise Architect is tedious, even with the existence of support such as the great work of Geert Bellekens. However, since Visual Studio 2015 we can […]
Registering a Sparx Enterprise Architect AddIn on Windows 10 x64 without administrative permissions
Sparx Enterprise Architect supports AddIns so we can enhance its functionality and behaviour in our daily work life as an architect. This is normally done by adding a subkey to the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Sparx Systems\EAAddins key. This is described in Geert Bellekens’ Tutorial: Create your first C# Enterprise Architect addin in 10 minutes. As we can read in the tutorial, in addition […]
[HOWTO] Add ListBox to Visio Sheet and access it in Visual Basic
Last week I had to deal with Visual Basic in Microsoft Visio Professional 2016. I wanted to fill a ListBox with items containing data from an Excel file. First I […]
