The Essential Project Forum

Hi Everyone

I am only learning how to use the Essential platform so am still very new to the environment. I looked at the product several years ago but got (majorly) side-tracked and have only just come back to it. I am really enjoying the software and pretty excited by what I am can see it can offer even after only spending a relatively small amount of time with it so far. I can see so many potential benefits. Anyway apologies if this has been asked before (I have done searches and have found nothing quite the same).

I am trying to develop a TRM but am having problems with the view updating in the viewer. I have stripped back all the data and started with just the limited data provided in the meta model but even with that small set of data I do not think I am seeing everything in the view that should be there. The only domain I have classified with a model position from the taxonomy is the technology platforms domain which after saving and uploading to the viewer is displayed in the view as I am expecting.
You can see though that there are things missing given the grey boxes for platform and storage. In the model though there are elements present under both platform services and storage services which simply do not appear on the view. There is no drill down link to show those elements that should appear under storage services and platform services.
This is also the case for elements in the drill downs that do have data present at the top level. If you drill into technology platforms for example, the server operating system element of software platform services shows only nine operating system products but the model has 23 products for server operating system. If you navigate to the technology component summary view of the server operating system all 23 are listed.
I am running Protege 3.5, Tomcat 9.0.30, widgets 6.7, metamodel 6.12, viewer 6.13 and import utility 2.31. I have allocated memory for both protege and tomcat as per the blog entry https://enterprise-architecture.org/blo ... essential/. Updating the viewer from within protege from the Essential Viewer tab connects creates snapshots and uploads without error. I have also tried using a significantly greater amount of data using imported Excel data with the same result. I have checked the protege and tomcat logs and from what I can see there are no obvious errors but I am certainly no expert when it comes to troubleshooting java based apps.

I hope I have explained this clearly enough and hoping also that this is a simple issue with my config or data entry. Any help would be very much appreciated as there is no value in going any further if I can't get these views to work correctly and that would be disappointing.

Thanks
Matt

Hi Matt,

Have you checked you technology product role class for the relatisonships between component and technology provider. You will probally find there is a relationship for everything shown as active / blue.

Regards
Colin

Hi Colin

I have double checked what you have suggested and that detail is present in everything that I am expecting to see in the TRM. I have checked the TRM requirements and made sure all the data is present as per https://essentialviewer.com/gdpr_demo/r ... 0&cl=en-gb. I have also opened up the entries for example for ESXi and Hyper-v and performed a side by side comparison and as far as I can tell they have the same data present but only ESXi is visible in Virtual Server Host in the TRM view. They are both however in the list if I expand Virtual Server Host --> Technology Component Summary.




Thanks for the suggetion but I don't see anything missing in that part of the data.

Matt

Hi Matt,
.
We're working on a view helper , it highlights the classes different views use and whether there is data there. It's a work in progress but try this, drop it in your user folder and just open it directly (xsl=user/el_views.xsl). In the technology reference model, check if every class is green (ignore the superclasses). Can you zoom out and post a screenshot so we can see what is going on.

Note: the other views work too, which may be useful - any feedback welcome, I'll ask the team to push this into Labs soon.

Hi John

Thanks for taking the time to have a look at this for me - I appreciate the assistance.

I have as you asked included the views checker in my user folder and opened it against the data which resulted in the following.
There is some red where I wasn't expecting it - the Technology_Componenet class. I went back and had another look at the data and I can't find anything missing there, specifically the details documented as required in the Technology Reference Model modelling guide.

I have though had some potential success albiet painful. If I delete a product and its role out of the model completely in Protege, add it back into via Protege configure its role and then assign it to a capability, after re-puslhing to the viewer it is there as expected. Not sure if this means anything to you or not.

Thanks
Matt

Hi Matt,

We're trying to work out what is going wrong as we've not seen this before. Don''t worry too much about the reds, you only need the bottom right to light up for the view to work, the other bits are other things you need if you want the filtering and standards, so not critical. The tech component count is a count issue, we'll fix once the view is ready for proper release.

Can you open this file (user folder and put the file name in the URL again) - it will generate a json structure in the console of cap, component, tpr IDs and tech product names. We should be able to check the structure being returned based on your data which may help us. If you run the view, open the console, copy the object and paste it into a text file then post that (or email it if you don't want to share here) and we'll take a look.

Thanks

John

Hi Matt,

By any (mal)chance, did you uncheck the "System is published slot" on some view related instance, (maybe a predefined one) ?

Jean-Marie

Hi John

I have attached what I am hoping is a text file of that data you requested. It is the JSON content from the Tech Check file. Had to upload the file with a jpg extension as it didn't like a text file extnesion or no extension at all (It is actually a text file). And no issue with the content it is mostly dummy data at this point.

@Jean-Marie I had a look for a number of the elements that were missing and couldn't see anywhere that the "system is published slot" had been modified.

Thanks again
Matt

Hi Matt,

Sorry, it hasn't attached, can you try again please. If the repo is dummy data and you are happy to share, then if you could zip up the 3 protege files and upload those, or email it to us, then we can see exactly what is going on.

Thanks

John

Sorry John

I didn't realise it hadn't attached. I have zipped and uploaded the protege files instead. It doesn't have much in it as I stripped most of the data out trying to work this out. Most of the information is from the baseline metamodel with some additions but it is exibhiting the behaviour described. I have also only classified 2 technology domains to try and reduce what I was looking at when viewing the TRM.

Thanks
Matt

Hi Matt,

We've made a change can you try this version of the view, replace your current one in the technology folder?

Thanks

John

Hi John

The update to the TRM view file seems to have solved the problem. I have clicked through about 3/4 of the content and it is all displayed as expected. I will check the remainder and let you know if there are still any issues however I am thinking that is going to be very unlikely given what I have checked so far.

Thank you very much for taking the time to resolve this for me.

Just as an aside I also had an issue with the latest widgets install. When using version 6.7 of the install, taking a Snapshot from protege fails when selecting XML format. Looking in the plugins/snapshots folder of portege the essential-xml-4.0.jar file was missing. Dropping back to version 6.2 however does include the file - which I copied and added to the folder after reinstalling with the 6.7 install which resolved the issue. Not sure if this was an isolated issue with just my install but I thought I would mention it in case it helps someone.

Thanks again,
Matt

Hi Matt,

Thanks for posting about the issue with the Snapshot Tab. We've identified an issue with the installer and will get this updated. The work-around that you described is great and is safe to use in the meantime.

Jonathan