I have investigated the early release you sent me and it is a MASSIVE step in the right direction! I was able to get a model with an applied profile to import and export without problems. I haven’t finished testing everything yet but this gives me lots of hope that we will be able to use VP-UML-- without profile support it didn’t seem that there was full round-trip compatibility with Eclipse UML2 as claimed.
I did notice one thing: in my profile, I have several stereotypes specified, but not all of them are applied to elements in my model. I noticed that only the applied stereotypes were imported into VP-UML. Was this the developers’ intention?
Thanks again for your responsiveness and for your help!
Hi ebadgley, Jacek, and those who were looking for the support of UML2 Profile,
I am happy to inform you all that VP Suite 3.1 Service Pack 1 has been released with the support of UML2 profile. If you are running VP Suite 3.1, you can advance to Service Pack 1 by running the Updater inside the bin folder of VP Suite installation directory.
As always, feel free to let me know if there are any questions.
This is a misunderstanding. VP Suite 3.1 includes VP-UML 6.1, SDE 4.1, DB-VA 4.1, BP-VA 2.1 and AG 1.1. When I said VP Suite 3.1 SP 1 has released with the support of UML2 profile, all the included products, including VP-UML 6.1 SP 1, include the change. Therefore, you can advance to VP-UML 6.1 Service Pack 1 to enjoy the support of UML2 profile.
What are the issues with importing UML2? We tried your file and can import without problem.
Thanks so much for the clarification. We had already placed an order for some Professional licenses of VP-UML, not the full VP Suite-- so I just wanted to confirm that we had ordered the right thing (given that you talked about VP Suite above)!
As for the importing problem, here’s a summary:
Open VP-UML.
On the File menu, select “Import->XMI File”.
Browse to the “nas_v1.8.1_packages.uml” file (which uses the profile defined in the other file).
The following message appears almost instantly:
[error 11:26:20]XMI file is not supported, xmi-version: 2.1, exporter: not found, exporter-version: not found
I am running Version 6.1, Build 20070801 (this was the version you so kindly provided to us earlier to demonstrate the fix for the Profile problems).
Thanks again for your continued help. We have been very impressed with VP’s service and responsiveness to issues like this and are looking forward to working with you further.
Build 20070801 is too old. Please advance to VP Suite 3.1 Service Pack 1 which have the fix of the problem you mentioned. You can run the update program inside the bin folder to advance to the latest version.
I tested the model I sent previously using the new build. It imported successfully! However, I still observe a couple of problems:
Our Tagged Values do not appear to be imported. In our profile, tagged values are defined as Properties on all of the stereotypes. There is a list of about 25 tagged values that should be attached to the “Bundle” stereotype for Packages, for example. When I import the model into VP-UML, I don’t see any of the tagged values-- the list is completely blank when I open it up on the Specification panel.
(As an example, the first package-- Aeronautical Aids to Navigation-- correctly has our “Bundle” stereotype applied, but there should be about 25 tagged values and I don’t see any of them.)
I am seeing most of our “unused” stereotypes imported from the profile. Thanks for the fix there. However, it still looks like a couple of them are missing:
ApplicationSchema, Bundle and Leaf stereotypes should extend Package; ApplicationSchema is missing.
Type, FeatureType, MetaClass, and InfoType stereotypes should extend Class; MetaClass and InfoType are missing.
Eclipse has a PrimitiveType element, and we have a BasicType stereotype that extends that. BasicType is showing up on Class…
The Eclipse DataType element is extended by our own custom DataType and Union stereotypes. I don’t see either of those in the VP-UML imported model.
The Eclipse Enumeration element is extended by our own Enumeration and CodeList stereotypes. I don’t see either of those.
Attribute and AssociationRole stereotypes extend Property-- these are both OK.
Our custom ASsociation extending the Association element is OK.
Our PackageDependency extending Dependency is OK.
Our InheritRelation extending Generalization is OK.
We also define an EnumerationLiteral stereotype extending the Eclipse EnumerationLiteral element-- this is missing.
I know the internal metamodel you are using is still UML, but it looks like some of the internal workings or representations of that metamodel is different enough between VP-UML and Eclipse that some things aren’t translating clearly…So I was wondering: Can this be fixed so that all of the stereotypes do come over cleanly? and, Is there a way to store the appropriate information so when writing the model back to Eclipse/UML2-compatible XMI 2.1, the translation works the other way as well?
Thanks for the amazingly prompt fix! I have tested and the patch does indeed fix the problems I mentioned before. Great work as usual! However, I did notice some additional issues when importing our model and profile:
Some additional stereotypes are showing up in the VP-UML model.
InheritRelation (Class) in addition to Inherit Relation (Generalization)
Association Role (AssociationEnd) and AssociationRole (AssociationEnd) in addition to Association Role (Property)
Attribute (Attribute) in addition to Attribute (Property)
BasicType (Property) in addition to BasicType (Class)
PackageDependency (Dependency) in addition to Package Dependency (Dependency).
Association (Association), Bundle (PackagE), Leaf (Package), Application Schema (Package), Enumeration (Enumeration), EnumerationLiteral (EnumerationLiteral), ISOType (DataType), InfoType (Class), MetaClass (Class), Type (Class), and Union (DataType) are all just fine.
It looks like two different things are happening here. Some of our stereotypes with spaces in the names (Package Dependency, Association Role) are having those spaces dropped and a new stereotype created accordingly (but without the proper tagged values attached to the original stereotype). Additionally, some new stereotypes are getting created that extend different UML metamodel elements from the original ones-- Attribute (Attribute) vs. Attribute (Property) is an example. Again, the new stereotype does not contain the tagged values of the old.
Where is Datatypes.Class coming from? It is stereotyped BasicType and primitive, and is used as the type for most of the attributes in the model. The attributes should instead have a type of Datatypes.TextLexUnconstrained…
Some stereotypes/tagged values are not being applied:
TextLexUnconstrained (in the Datatypes package) is supposed to be stereotyped <> and have the appropriate tagged values-- it doesn’t.
The <> dependency relationships (there is at least one in most packages) are stereotyped <> instead of <>. For this reason, there are no tagged values attached to them. This appears to be a situation where the second, incorrect stereotype is getting used instead of the correct stereotype.
The same thing as above appears to be happening with dependencies, where the <> stereotype is getting used instead of the correct <>. For this reason the tagged values from <> don’t show up.
The same thing is happening with all attributes, which are getting stereotyped Attribute (Attribute) instead of Attribute (Property).
Constraints within our model don’t seem to show up. For example, Elevation.Hypsography.SpotElevation has one constraint on its geometry that I don’t see in the VP-UML project.
If there are changes we can make to our Profile that will make the round-trip to and from UML2 easier, it is no problem to do that. I suspect that VP-UML’s implementation of the UML 2.x metamodel may have some significant differences to Eclipse’s implementation that are causing some of the discrepancies here. We’d simply like to get “lossless” round-trip translation from VP-UML to Eclipse and vice-versa up and running.
Also, please let me know if you would prefer to continue our discussion outside the forums, as I’ve monopolized this topic recently (thanks to Jacenty for allowing me to do so).
