UML & SysML modelling languages

This article introduces a free third-party tool by Geert Bellekens, EA Reference Data Splitter, to help with publishing scripts defined in Enterprise Architect.

Sparx Enterprise Architect security feature involves setting up users, groups, and permissions for access and authentication purposes. It can be applied for a shared access to model repositories configured and stored on a central database such as MySQL, Postgres, SQL Server... Windows Active Directory is supported so authentication can be performed based on the users' Windows sessions.

EA lets one exports the list of users, groups, and permissions to XML in order to copy such configuration from one Enterprise Architect repository to another. I've been asked to generate a custom Excel export in EA to extract the following information, requested by administrators in charge of maintaining the EA projects: list of users and assigned groups, list of permissions enabled for each group and for each user.

One of the great and powerful sides of Sparx Systems Enterprise Architect modelling tool is it open automation interface (API) to extend its features. As regards I was able to generate such Excel file via VB Scripts within EA by querying the internal database. Even though the API is pretty well documented by Sparx Systems, I couldn't get the name for the permissions id values I retrieved.

I had to run a manual check on each permission to produce a mapping table. This information can be useful if you come across a similar scenario.

• Update (07/02/2017) added permissions introduced in Enterprise Architect 13: Edit Scripts, Run Scripts, Configure Project Prerequisites