Enterprise Architect version 15.2
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Adrian Lincoln
For over 40 years I’ve been involved in technology based roles from developing software and hardware products, product innovation through to product / project management roles in the telecoms, aerospace, oil & gas, and financial industries My change of roles has often followed my interest in a new technology, whether it was writing assembler for the first microprocessors in the late 70′s, micro-coding bit slice machines in the early 80′s, to the arrival of C++ and the promise of OO in the late 80′s or developing applications on small devices such as mobile handsets. I have been using EA since 2002 and it is one of the key tools I use to help organise my worlds. I am now retired but still spend time helping others benefit from EA as well as mentoring small businesses.
New release of EA Installation Inspector V7 adds support for 64-bit AddIns
Originally released to the community in January 2014 EA Installation Inspector has been invaluable when developing and testing EA AddIns. This version is an intial release which provides support for both 32-bit and 64-bit addins.
The user interface details information about the current EA installation as well as a list of the AddIns detailing where the Sparx AddIn key is defined, classes registered and the related DLL file.
Double click on an entry to get more details about a specific entry.
Alternatively, use the treeviewer presentation, with its context sensitive menus, to explore further or initiate searches within the windows registry.
Installation
A copy of this initial release of eaInstallationInspector can be obtained at EAII - Download page
The zip file (EAInstallationInspectorV7xxx.zip) contains the windows executable. Unzip the contents eaInstallationInspectorV7xx.exe and run.
It may be that you are unable to run the program due to Windows security policies that are set on your system. In that case you will need to get suitable permissions from your computer administrator.
Documentation
Included in the attached zip is a document eaInstallationInspectionInformationV7xx.pdf which provides information about the utility functions and presentation of its results. This information is also included in the application, available through the help button.
Source
For those interested the source is available on Github at https://github.com/EXploringEA/EAInstallationInspector
Feedback
As this is a major change there are likely to be a few changes as feedback is received on what and how the information is presented. Please send any feedback to This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
New release of EA Installation Inspector (V4)
EXploringEA is pleased to provide an update to our free EA Installation Inspector adding a few potentially useful features for AddIn developers. For more details and to download look at our updated post in the community resources area. For those interested the source code is available at the EXploringEA GitHub.
And do let us know if there is other information that you would find useful (and why) and which we could include is this utility - drop me an email at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
New release of EA Installation Inspector
EXploringEA is pleased to provide an update to our free EA Installation Inspector - a small utility that provides information about the current version of EA and its AddIns. The initial version has been downloaded approximately 600 times, so has proved popular. For more details go to our post in the community resources area and download the latest release. And do let us know if there is other information that you think would find useful (and why) to include is this utility - drop me an email at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
EA Installation Inspector V4
EA Installation Inspector (Version 4) is a small utility that provides information about the current version of EA and its AddIns.
Minor update that may be useful to some.
Version 4 (June 2017):
- Added a form to display a list of classes and methods provided by the AddIn DLL
Version 3 (September 2016):
- Additional registry locations checked for add-in keys
Version 2 (November 2015):
- Searches HKLM as well as HKCU for Sparx keys
- Provide a pop-up form to make it easier to view detail of an entry
The need
1. During the development and testing of EA AddIns it is all too easy to get an issue with an AddIn not loading correctly - typically, but not always, it means a value in the Windows registry is not correct or a DLL is not in the referenced location. Finding these issues by checking through the registry can be a time consuming task.
2. A customer installs your AddIn and it is not working as expected. So you want to get some concrete information on their installation. For most customers, asking them to check registry settings is really not a good idea.
The solution
A small windows program that reads the information from the registry, performing the relevant searches and presenting the information clearly.
EA Installation Inspector performs this task. Below is an example screen shot illustrating the AddIns status for the system. The colouring of the results provides important information on their status.
A user can double click an entry to present a summary for the seleted AddIn:
Then they can inspect the list of classes and methods provided:
Note: The output from this utility is based on my assumptions of what EA would do in looking for, and loading, AddIns. I do not have information of that process so I cannot guarantee that the utility will report on all relevant issues.
Installation
The attached zip file (EAInstallationInspectorV4.zip) contains the windows executable. Unzip the contents eaInstallationInspectorV4.exe and run.
It may be that you are unable to run the program due to Windows security policies that are set on your system. In that case you will need to get suitable permissions from your computer administrator.
Documentation
Included in the attached zip is a document eaInstallationInspectionInformationV4.pdf which provides information about the utility functions and presentation of its results. This information is also included in the application, available through the help button.
Source
For those interested the source is available on Github at https://github.com/EXploringEA/EAInstallationInspector
Feedback
The functions provided in this utility are those that have helped me. They may not cover your needs - so do let me know if there are any other functions that you would find useful when developing and testing AddIns and I'll look at adding them into future versions of EA Installation Inspector.