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EA SafeDelete

“Save time & money by safeguarding against accidental deletion.”

EA SafeDelete EA SafeDelete; Overview

When deleting items (Views, Packages, Elements or Diagrams) from a repository, Enterprise Architect warns the user that the delete action is irreversible, however, Enterprise Architect’s delete functionality suffers from the following problems:

  • The wording of the warnings is inconsistent. If a user deletes an item from a diagram (Ctrl + Del), then the warning indicates that the process cannot be undone. However if does not warn that any children will also be deleted. If a user deletes an item from the Project Browser (Ctrl + Del or Right-click Delete), then the warning indicates that the process will delete all children, but does not warn that the process cannot be undone.
  • Enterprise Architect provides no indication as to the effect that deleting an item from the repository may have on other items in the repository. For example, which diagrams refer to this item, and what relationships exist between this item and other items.
  • As the delete process cannot be undone, mistakes cannot be rectified easily.

Safe Delete is an extension to Enterprise Architect seeks to address these limitations by:

  • Providing a standard warning dialog in addition to those provided by Enterprise Architect
  • Providing totals of:
    • The number of diagrams which refer to the element being deleted
    • The number of composite elements that link to a diagram being deleted
    • The number of Interaction Occurrences that link to the diagram being deleted
    • The number of elements related to the element being deleted
    • The number of elements where the element is being used as a classifier
    • The number of occurrences where this element is used as a type
    • The number of children (including any diagrams) that the element has
  • Providing the option of moving the item (and its children)to a re-cycle bin thus preserving any relationships, or deleting the item (and its children) from the model repository
  • Providing the functionality to empty the re-cycle bin (that is remove all items currently in the re-cycle bin from the model repository
  • Providing the functionality to restore an item (and its children) from the re-cycle bin
  • Providing the functionality to restore all items (and their children) from the re-cycle bin
  • Providing the option to enable / disable Safe Delete’s functionality

EA SafeDelete; Functionality

When an Enterprise Architect user selects to delete a Package, Element or Diagram from the repository, EA SafeDelete “intercepts” the action, analyses the consequences of the delete and provides a Consequences Summary Screen an example of which is shown below:

EA SafeDelete: Warning Dialog

The user can then select to investigate further, by clicking any of the enabled Show Details buttons which will provide details of the selected consequence. In the example above 27 items will lose their type, clicking on Show Details will display the following:

EA SafeDelete: More Detail

The user can then use the dialog above to locate any of the items in the lists, by selecting the item and then selecting Find in Project Browser.

EA SafeDelete provides the Enterprise Architect user with all the consequence information so that they can make an informed decision as to whether the item should be deleted from the repository or moved to a re-cycle bin.

If the user selects to move an item to the re-cycle bin, EA SafeDelete will do exactly that and the item will not be removed from the repository.

The screenshot below, shows a typical Re-cycle bin contents;

EA SafeDelete: Recycle Bin

Price

The EA SafeDelete MDG extension for Sparx Enterprise Architect is available direct from Dunstan Thomas Consulting at £150.00 per licence (VAT charged where applicable at the standard rate).

If you would like to purchase EA SafeDelete licences or require further information please contact our sales team:

Request a quote for EA SafeDelete
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Dunstan Thomas Consulting is part of the Dunstan Thomas Group of companies that specialise in the delivery of innovative technology solutions.

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