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Drawing EVA Netmodeler Meta Models using Visio

This section is intended for use by persons responsible for defining and maintaining the EVA Netmodeler meta model.

The EVA Netmodeler Type Browser provides all the tools required to define and maintain the EVA Netmodeler meta model. However, it is sometimes useful to build a model that provides an overview to a specific domain or area of the meta model, similar to a business domain model. You can use Visio to draw graphical representations of the meta models that are defined in the EVA Netmodeler repository. Note that this is a one-way process only - you can extract the meta data from EVA Netmodeler and draw the model, but you cannot send any changes that you make to the meta model back to EVA Netmodeler. You must still use the EVA Netmodeler Type Browser to make changes to the EVA Netmodeler meta model.

This section describes how to use Visio together with the ArchiRequester middleware to draw EVA Netmodeler meta models. Refer to the section on Graphical Modeling XML for a description of how to set up a new meta model type or meta model.

Meta Modeling Overview

Meta modeling works exactly like instance modeling, except that we are not modeling EVA Netmodeler items themselves, but rather the meta-definition for these items. In order to represent this information visually, we require the following:

AGMCGIMMOverview 

  1. An EVA Netmodeler instance of type "Meta Model Type" describing the mapping between visual object types and EVA Netmodeler NodeTypes. This differs from the instance model type in the sense that there is only one visual type for every EVA Netmodeler nodetype and one visual type for every EVA Netmodeler RelType.
  2. An EVA Netmodeler instance of type "Meta Model" containing all information needed to represent the model visually. This includes co-ordinates, size and so forth.
    The Meta Model instance also describes the contents of the model by nominating a specific "Domain". Information in a domain can be filtered by using the "EXCLUDE" xml tags (see discussion below for more detail on how this is done).
  3. A relationship between the "Meta Model Type" and the "Meta Model".

 All meta models have a very simple structure consisting of EVA Netmodeler types and relationships between them. EVA Netmodeler comes pre-packaged with a meta model type that maps these two concepts on to the UML concepts of Class and Binary Association respectively. The Meta Model type is called MetaModel - No Attributes. You can use this meta model definition together with the UML Static Structure stencil in Visio 2003 to draw EVA Netmodeler meta models.

Note: The Meta Modeling facility is currently limited to extracting meta model fragments so that they can be laid out in Visio and saved as a Visio diagram. No facility exists to save the meta model diagram back to the repository. A subsequent release may provide a tool that will propagate meta-models back into the repository.

Drawing a meta model using Visio

    1. Open the EVA Netmodeler Item browser and navigate to the type Meta Model.

    2. Either clone an existing meta model, or create a new one using the information provided in the section on Graphical Modeling XML. Specify the desired Domain in the model XML and save the model in the repository.

    3. Open Visio and load a diagram file containing the ArchiRequester VBA macro code. Refer to the section on Configuring Visio to connect to the ArchiRequester for instructions on how to do this.

    4. Open the UML Static Structure stencil in the drawing.

    5. Start the ArchiRequester interface using the following menu options:

    Visio-GetModel

    6. This will open the dialog shown below

  1. Visio-SelectModelType
  2. Ensure that the server URL is correct for your environment. The highlighted portion of the URL shown above must be replaced with the details for your EVA Netmodeler server.
  3. Provide your EVA Netmodeler User id and Password. These are stored securely on the workstation as defaults for future use.
  4. Select the  button on the right of the Model Type list box to get a list of Model Types from the server. Note that the meta model types are prefixed with the word META: in the model type list. When the list of available model types has been retrieved, select the appropriate meta model type from the list of available model types.
  5. 7. Retrieve the list of available meta models of the selected meta model type by selecting the button next to the Model Name text box.
    • Visio-GetMetaModel
  6. 8. A progress window similar to the one shown here will display the progress of the Send Model process after you select the OK button.
  7. Visio-GetMetaModelProgress

    The meta model elements will be retrieved from the EVA Netmodeler repository and rendered in the Visio diagram pane. Note that Visio sometimes draws new items outside of the defined page area, so you may have to zoom out to find the items and move them onto the page.

    9. Save the Visio Diagram of the EVA Netmodeler meta model fragment.  If desired you can save the diagram file on you local file system.

Note that Meta Models do not get stored back to the EVA Netmodeler repository. Retrieving the meta model from the EVA Netmodeler repository again will re-create the meta model in the Visio diagram page, discarding any layout changes that you may have made.