Canada – Rhapsody TechBlog

I’ve been in the USA for quite some times. But Nashville was new, never been there before. So I increased my State count to 39! 11 to go.
The cheapest flight I could get was from Hannover. Via Amsterdam (which is closer to me, but don’t skip a leg, that’ll cost you….amazing in this time of saving the environment….)
So I got on the plane to AMS early for the stopover to… Toronto! I’ve been there before, twice. Nice city! There I would get on a plane to Nashville.

I was in Nashville for the Kick-off Conference of our beloved USA partner 321-Gang.

After the Kick-Off there was, luckily, some time left to visit Florida, a real must in winter time 😉 After 3 nice warm days I was on the way back ( ;-( ;-( ;-( ) But that was less easy then I thought… Again I would fly via Toronto but the plane coming from Toronto had a delay (Cause: medical Emergency…)
The information on the duration of the delay was very fuzzy. I tried to find out an alternative way to fly home but there was no real alternative.
So I gambled on the original flight that was earlier then expected.
It was, for hours and hours, on the tipping point of “Not going to make it” and “Just in Time”. I hate that.
To cut a long story short: The fact that I had to cross customs in Canada made me miss my plane.
So I had to spend another 24 hours in Canada. With only T-Shirts. And with -13ºC outside…
Luckily KLM was very, extremely good and they shifted my flight (They didn’t have to, i was on the cheap non-refundable flight) WestJet (Canada air-carrier operating for Delta) did not want to reimburse my Hotel costs.. “Use your insurance”…. Yeah I will.

Reverse and Roundtrip

In the last versions of Rhapsody we receive an increasing number of complaints about issues with Reverse and/or Roundtrip Engineering.

Issues

The issues are:

Reverse Engineering seems to start but does not give a result.
“Populate Diagram” is missing in the “Operation” menu

Rhapsody Version/License

A possibility is that your license is too old. What?? But everything works fine, except….
That is correct. Your old license also works for newer Rhapsody versions, I don’t understand that either, i’d link that to newer versions and support payments but hey, I know nothing about that….
So, exactly right. In some version of Rhapsody there was an entry added in the license file for Reverse/Roundtrip. Adding this solves the problem. You can generate a new license file in the License Key Center. (If you have a support contract with SodiusWillert (or Sodius or Willert or event somewhere else) we’ll help you.

32/64-bit

Most of these problems are related to the 32/64-bit version of Rhapsody. Due to some historic reasons the 64-bit version of Rhapsody lacked a lot of options that the 32-bit version had.
Also because of the way Windows is built, it is not easy to almost impossible to start 32-bit apps from 64-bit apps and vice-versa.

Solution

You can install both the 32-bit and the 64-bit version of Rhapsody even from the same install version. Remember that you then also need both Service Packs if you upgrade!
Then you can start 32-bit if you want to do stuff that involves any roundtrip or reverse engineering and use the 64-bit for everything else. Models are interchangeable.

So. That’s it. Have fun modelling with Rhapsody

Walter van der Heiden (wvdheiden@sodiuswillert.com)

And…. back…

Well not completely. Just sitting at the Delta Terminal in Detroit and waiting for the flight back to Schiphol Airport.
It has been a busy week with many customer visits, conf-calls and our Engineering@Scale event at the GM Heritage center.
Thanks for everyone that was there, it was cool. I think I have sent my presentation to everybody, if not… it is here: Pres – UML Modeling vs Coding E@S TD Detroit
The Willert Software Tools Movie that explains the use of tools in an Automotive field is here: Seamless Model-Based Development Process for Embedded Software Engineering

AUTOSAR

I had a cool demo with me, we (or actually Clemens….) managed to bring a first prototype of the RXF ArcCore RTE Connection. Still some “WorkToDo” but we have already a good working example where we can base the rest on. We are working in parallel on reading ARXML and extracting the relevant UML elements like ports, interfaces, variables, defines, types, runnable names, software components, so we can automate the process of using UML for the embedded automotive engineers. We are working to implement at least 2 use cases for the use of Rhapsody in Automotive environments:

UseCase 1 – Architecture

If you want to do your architectural work with Rhapsody, we want to offer a way to export stereotyped UML/SysML elements to an ARXML file. We’re currently not completely sure what we want to export, if you have ideas: SEND THEM!!

UseCase 2 – Behavior

You already have an architecture, you have defined SWC’s (or Runnables) and you want to implement (some of) them in Rhapsody. This is the UseCase that we are pursuing first (Because it is easier, we more or less know what to do, we have done it already for an older version of Rhapsody and an older version of AUTOSAR)

Niagara Falls

So. A brief overview of what we are working on. In 3 weeks I am back in the USA for more visits, AUTOSAR Conference and the IBM ICE Meeting.
This weekend we did a “round Lake Erie”. That takes you through Canada, Niagara Falls, Buffalo, Cleveland and back to Detroit. That was pretty cool, here are some pictures.