Rhapsody TechBlog

BLOG about IBM Rhapsody. Contains technical information as well as more private travel stories.

Tag: Personal (Page 2 of 3)

Florida 2: The Keys

May 4, 2018 / / 0 Comments

The Keys

The Florida Keys are the small string of Islands that lie south of the Florida peninsula. They are connected to each other via a couple of bridges and a long highway.
I’ve been there before but that had to happen on one day and before the flight back so I had not much time to enjoy the beautiful scenery and the islands itself.
The attraction is of course Key West where you are very close to Cuba (90 miles, 145km)

distance-from-cuba-to-key-west-1

So this time we planned a bit longer visit and even an overnight stay. Getting a room was OK, apparently it was not the tourist season. Still it was quite busy on Duval Street that is the main attraction. Lots of cruise-ships stop at Key West, unloading lots of passengers. That is the main income of the islands.

The trip to the island is (for me…) the main attraction. We were driving there in a BMW 430i convertible. That was pretty cool.

Hemingway’s House (& cats)

One of the attractions of Key West is the house of Ernest Hemingway.

IMG_1123.jpg

It is now a museum (you have to pay for it… very undutch…) and shows the house in its original state. The walls are full with Hemingway memorabilia and explanations about his life.
I had heard of Hemingway of course but never read anything from him. I immediately started to read “The old man and the sea”.
The house is populated by many cats that are all descendants of Hemingway’s cat “Snow White” who had 6 toes on each foot. The cats there all (as far as i could see) have that too and is quite remarkable.

How to associate Rhapsody model files in the explorer with a specific Rhapsody version

After installing a new Rhapsody version, e.g. for testing purposes, you might still want to let the Windows Explorer open your .rpy or .rpyx Rhapsody model files with another Rhapsody version you are still using for production. This how-to briefly describes where to configure the file extension to application association.

how to associate rpyx

Step-by-step guide

  1. Open the Windows Registry Editor (regedit.exe)
  2. Navigate to “HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\.rpyx” (or “HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\.rpy”)
  3. Make sure the value name “(Default)” contains the data “rpyxFile” (or “rpyFile”) (without quotes)
  4. Navigate to “HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\rpyxFile\Shell\Open\command” (or “HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\rpyFile\Shell\Open\command”)
  5. Modify the value named “(Default)” to contains the data (including quotes):
    “<Full path to your desired Rhapsody version program path>\Rhapsody.exe” -cmd=open “%1”
    If you have a multi language installation but per default want to open Rhapsody in a specific language or edition, you can add additional arguments before “-cmd…”.
    Examples:

    1. Development Edition in C: -dev_ed -lang=c
    2. Architect for Software: -architect
  6. You might also want to check HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\rpy[x]File\DefaultIcon

Thanks to Eike for writing this down!

Here some pictures of the keys.

That’s it! Happy modeling with Rhapsody!

Walter van der Heiden (wvdheiden@willert.de)

Animation in Florida

May 2, 2018 / / 0 Comments

Vacation

Even traveling modelers have vacation, sometimes. Although my life sometimes looks like a long vacation, it still is work. I usually have only limited time to really look at something.
So I decided to spend 2 weeks in the United States, in Florida. Finally time to see more than airports and security checks.
My youngest son joined me and on may 1 we left in the morning to fly to Fort Myers via Detroit. I will tell a lot more about where we went and what we did.

The planning is to visit The Keys, Tampa, Orlando, Daytona Beach, Bahamas, Miami and of course my friend Arno in Fort Myers.
That is quite a program for 10 days but we’ll see. First we spend a day at Arno’s to join the pool….

Animation

Not really a theme for me… The Willert Version of Rhapsody does not support Animation (Therefore we include our “world-famous” Target Debugger.
A question came in from a customer about the use of animation with more than one Rhapsody version (So you can animate different applications)
This is actually quite easy once you understand how Animation works.
Rhapsody generates extra code when you switch on Animation, every function has some Macro in it, different macros for different functions.
Also the framework includes the Animation and tracing Framework, that provides the functions you need to animate.
If you start the Rhapsody developer it will reserve a TCP/IP Port for the Animation communication. The number is 6423. This is the reason that when you start a second instance of the developer there is an error message that says: “Rhapsody cannot create socket” or something like that.

Solution

There are multiple solutions.
They both involve the Rhapsody.ini file, this file must be right next to your Share directory.

  • Create a second Data directory for Rhapsody and change the Animation Port Number. Create shortcuts that start Rhapsody in different directories.
    Advantage is that you gave control over the port number and you can decide which one to start.
  • Add a line AnimationPortRange=10 to your Rhapsody.ini file. Now Rhapsody will use a new port number (after 6423 or whatever you have configured in rhapsody.ini) each time you start a new Rhapsody instance.
    You have to generate and build your code (It contains the correct port number) to use the correct port.

That’s it for today, Happy Modeling with Rhapsody!

 

Walter van der Heiden (wvdheiden@willert.de)

Moving Rhapsody

April 27, 2018 / / 0 Comments

Kings Day

Today is Kings Day in the Netherlands. We celebrate that our King (“Willem Alexander” but we may call him “Willy:) has his birthday. That is quite a party over here, I can certainly recommend being in the Netherlands on that day (and the night before)

Koningsdag-Op-Vrijdag

Kings Day Party in the Netherlands

So everybody in the Netherlands has a day-off. Unfortunately I work in Germany… so I have to work. Therefore I have many other holidays that are unknown to the Dutch…

Willy en Familie.jpeg

Willy and family

Happy 51st Birthday, Willy!

How to move Rhapsody (or parts of it)

I’m sure it has happened to you and it did happen to me yesterday. I always install Rhapsody in “C:\Dev Tools” (Yes, with a space, we need to test that…)  but I mistyped (These characters get smaller every year….) and I typed: “C:\De Tools”.
The cowards way out is to de-install and then re-install.
I decided to try out if i could repair it…. As the Germans say: “Nur die Harten kommen in Garten” (Means something like: “Only the tough ones go to heaven”)

I just moved all files and then started thinking that I might have traces left in the registry. So i started…. not regedit. That is a bad tool, come on Microsoft… you can do better. If you dump a very bad idea known as “The Registry” on us, then give us something useful to work on it.
luckily there are better tools, I have the pro version of Registrar (there is a free version that works fine) where you can search and replace in the complete registry. And much more.

So I searched and replaced “c:\De tools” with “c:\DevTools” and it started to look better. Of course i had to repair the shortcuts and now I also “moved” the Rhapsody “Share” directory, Rhapsody was whining when I started it. I had to edit the Rhapsody.ini and the DiffMerge.ini files. Then it was OK. This did not really saved time but it was fun to do.

Splitting the Data Directory

What I forgot is that on our development systems we cannot use the convenient way of installing outside of the Windows “Program Files” directories and then “Install all files in one directory”. i did that but because we have to generate install and setup files from our development installation automatically we need to split the directories. So I had to move the “Data Directory”
If you already installed the Data separately it is easier, you only have to edit the Rhapsody.ini and the DiffMerge.ini (Even if you do not use the latter: edit it! If you ever want to use it it won’t work and you have no clue why!)

Moving the “Share” directory

Well… if you have everything Rhapsody in one directory it’s actually a bit more than just the “Share” dir. You also have to move:

  • Share
  • Samples
  • Sodius
  • Gateway,
    • NOT completely… just the “examples” subdirectory!!
  • Test Conductor
    • A bit more complicated….Screen Shot 2018-04-27 at 10.09.28.png
      This are the files that you have to move to the “Data” part.
  • DiffMerge.ini
    • Search and Replace all instances of the “old” directory
  • Rhapsody.ini
    • Search and Replace some of the instances of the “old” directory, if you had the paths splitted it is easy, if you want to split the installation by hand note this:
      • NOT!!! The paths under the “WelcomeWizard and the WelcomeScreen_Gateway!!! These need to be pointing to the “Program” directory!
      • NOT!! The JavaClassPath and the other Paths under JVM! They also need to point to the “Program” directory!
      • There is also an Entry: “WORKSPACE_ROOT”, you can make that point to a directory where you want to start new Projects by Default!
      • Other directories: check if they point to something that exists…

And then you are OK! At best use a decent editor (Notepad++ or so) and do Search and replace with confirmation.

It does not seem to affect anything but you can repair the Registry so that it seems that Rhapsody was really installed the way you have moved it now.
Just take care that you do not make any mistakes…

Having everything installed in one place is not really making things easy when moving and splitting up Rhapsody. With a decent Registry Editor you can do it quite quick, in case of Test Conductor I think that de-install and re-install (All add-ins can be re-installed! Just call the installer and press “Modify”!) is a lot faster than setting everything by hand.

Note: I installed 32Bit and 64Bit next to each other on one system. Perfectly possible, just rename the Data and program directories (I used 8.3 for 64Bit and 8.3-32 for 32Bit)

Happy Kingsday and have fun modeling with Rhapsody!

Walter van der Heiden (wvdheiden@willert.nl)

Incredible India

April 3, 2018 / / 1 Comment

Recently I visited India for a 10 days. In Hyderabad to be precise. So after arriving at home Friday night after a week of training in Bückeburg I had to unpack and re-pack my bags. Saturday morning early my KLM plane for Delhi would leave from Schiphol.
It was an old 747, I haven’t flown a 747 since a long time, i didn’t even know that they were still in use. But I saw a couple of them so KLM is still using them, On the inside you could clearly see that the 747 is a bit old. No USB chargers, I tried to operate the miniature inflight entertainment screen (That was not much larger than my iPhone) and just before i started to get annoyed because it wouldn’t accept my inputs I realized it wasn’t a touch-screen… The rest was also outdated but…. still OK. The plane left a bit before 13:00u (1pm) and would arrive 7,5 hours later in New Delhi. Too early to sleep, but I had a connecting flight with a long stop-over so I thought I could find some other time to sleep a bit.

I had an Economy plus seat, a bit more room and… luck because the middle seat stayed empty. You could choose between Indian food and Western food. Easy choice… for me. Nice detail: all the food on the flight was vegetarian! And very, very good… I tried a nap after the lunch but i was not tired enough. So after almost 8 hours we landed on Indira Gandhi International Airport in New Delhi.

I got out pretty early, just after the Business Class and I was in line for the customs early. Unfortunately, KLM had forgotten to supply us with the visa papers… so I had to go back and fill it in and then line up behind the rest of the plane… Took quite a while but in the end they let me in. I’ve been to India before, last time it took me 2 days at the embassy in The Hague to get a Visum, the online Visum is a huge improvement.

After that searching for my suitcase (I had a big case with Training Material) and after I finally found that I went to an exchange shop to change some euro’s into Rupees. A bit of cash money is always convenient. I brought some (Well.. actually a lot…) from my last visit but India decided to use new banknotes and make the old ones invalid. Thanks India!
I had 4,5 hours for my stopover so I was very relaxed, going to the last check at the customs, bought myself a SIM-card so I could use Mobile Data in India (My mobile plan covers much but it does not cover India…) and then I started searching for the place where I could check-in my luggage for the flight with IndiGo Airway… That turned out to be in the domestic terminal. And that was on an airport with the same name but that name was also used for an older airport on the other side of Delhi… So I had to cross the airport to the shuttle terminal and drag my stuff into an old bus together with 50 other people with too many suitcases and other luggage. I managed to get a ticket and waited for the bus in the most air polluted place I’ve ever been. Half an hour equaled 10 packs of cigarettes. Yikes.

Slowly however… time ran out. The bus came and had to drive almost an hour… after arriving only 40 minutes would be left. If you have ever been to an airport in India you know that is not nearly enough… Luckily a nice Indian gentleman next to me in the bus understood my problem and helped me out. He arranged 2 guys on the airport that took my suitcases and led me through some “secret” airport elevators and hallways. They spoke with a lady behind the counter and I was the first one in a long, long line… Costed me EUR 10,- Not “compliant” I’m afraid but saved a lot more… With 1 minute left I made it to the bus to the plane.

At the plane it was time for a surprise, it was an Airbus A320neo. Almost brand new (although I read today that some of them are grounded due to Pratt&Whitney engine trouble) It took off precisely in time at 5am and flew to Hyderabad in just over 2 hours. The flight was more or less OK but I learned one more thing: Indian pilots fly just as Indian taxi drivers drive….

After 2 hours we were in Hyderabad. We tried landing twice and twice it made a fly-over. (According to the pilot “a completely safe maneuver “) Yes please….
After circling for an hour the plane accelerated and the pilot told us we would fly to Chennai. Cool, I did not expect to ever go there and before you know… But information was scarce and I did not really know what to expect. Directly after the landing and parking all other passengers stood up and started moving to the door and shouting through each other. Some guy from IndiGo got in the plane and mastered the chaos. He let he passengers out that had to be in Chennai anyway. We waited for 2 hours in the burning sun. We got a lunch box with chips and (Yeah!!) water. After 2 hours we took off again and an hour later we landed in Hyderabad.

After a non successful search for the hotel shuttle I gave up and took a taxi to the hotel where I arrived 24 hours after leaving home.

OK… this is a Rhapsody BLOG….

I have some news on Rhapsody as well. Some of it was written by Eike Römer on our Download Portal. I copied it here.

  • The 8.3 Version is now OK to use from our point of view with restrictions:
    • only with iFix 2 (all available on our Download Portal)
    • Beware if you use it for existing projects! Either your Version history is lost (or retained with much effort) or you have to meticulously save in the old format.
    • for new projects it is OK
  • The 64Bit version is also free to use! read here how you can update the frameworks.

 

Rhapsody 8.3 with the RXF Frameworks

Our existing Realtime eXecution Frameworks (RXF) available on the Willert Download Portal (https://download.willert.de/) can be used together with Rhapsody 8.3 iFix 2. However, RXF versions that have been tested and released with an earlier Rhapsody version than 8.1.5 need the applied JDK workaround documented on: https://download.willert.de/rhapsody-8-1-5-support/

RXF-Cert is Rhapsody Version Specific

RXF-Cert frameworks (prepared for safety critical software development certification) are an exception, as they have been documented, tested and prepared for certification for one specific Rhapsody version. Please contact us and discuss the Rhapsody upgrade path for your specific certification environment if you want to migrate to Rhapsody 8.3 iFix 2.

Rhapsody 32- vs. 64-Bit

Until today we highly recommended only installing Rhapsody in the 32-bit edition. The main reason was a limitation in features like roundtripping, reverse engineering etc.

With Rhapsody 8.3 iFix 2 this has changed. You may now also work with the 64-bit edition of Rhapsody. However the Willert Installer (Setup.exe as part of an RXF release) needed to learn how to handle Rhapsody 64-bit installations. All RXF releases after 2018-03-13 can handle Rhapsody 64-bit installations out-of-the-box. For older RXF releases you need to replace the old Setup.exe with the one you can download here:

https://download.willert.de/downloads/setup_2018-03_64bit/

 

That was it! happy modeling with Rhapsody

Walter van der Heiden (wvdheiden@willert.de)

 

Think!

March 22, 2018 / / 1 Comment

This is the week of the IBM Think! in Las Vegas. I actually hate Las Vegas, it is a very aggressive place to be for my poor Asperger brain. I already had some serious “Sensor Overload Errors” there. I prefer Florida but you can’t win them all. IBM wants me to go to Vegas…

Also the IBM Conferences get bigger and bigger every year. I loved the Innovate in Florida, not just because of Florida but also because it was much smaller. You could really find all the people you need. In LV it is almost impossible to meet somebody.

Luckily there is the German IoT Conference (and hopefully the US IoT Conference) I feel a lot more at home there.

At least “Think!” is a great name, thinking is generally a good idea.

Hyperlinks

To gather information in your model it is a good idea to use Hyperlinks. You can use hyperlinks to save links to:

  • model elements (Change the view of your elements)
  • websites (Compiler, CPU, Willert!)
  • documents on your disk (For use in the project)

For documentation it is better to use “controlled files”, they will be part of the model and can be transferred to others.

Package Hyperlinks are a bit hidden, you have to right-click on a package and select “Add New”, “Relations” , “Hyperlinks”. Don’t forget that a click on a hyperlink will not open the features but the target of the hyperlink.

 

Explorer Helperhelper_explorer.JPG

I often search for my Model directory. Rhapsody does not always show it in the File Menu and you then have to open the configuration, go to the Settings Tab and look where the generated source is. There is a better way to do that.
Goto “Tools” “Customize” “Helpers…”.
Add a new item there, call it Explorer (or what you like) and fill in “explorer” at the command and “.” at the arguments.
This will give you a menu item under Tools that opens an explorer window with your project directory. Cool eh?

Happy Modeling with Rhapsody!

Walter van der Heiden ( wvdheiden@willert.de )

Happy New Year!

January 8, 2018 / / 0 Comments

I wish everybody a “model” 2018! I had a little break during the christmas and new year holidays. Traveling is cool, but even a modeling traveler needs some rest once and a while.
But now we started a whole new year, 2018, and we have lots of plans to improve modeling in embedded.
IBM is also cooperating, they released Rhapsody 8.3, a brand new version with lots of changes!

AUTOSAR: migration of models to older versions of AUTOSAR

In release 8.3, for migration of AUTOSAR projects to an older version of AUTOSAR, additional target AUTOSAR versions have been added.

Code-centric mode: roundtripping changes to operation signatures

Prior to release 8.3, in code-centric mode, if you renamed an operation or modified its parameters and then roundtripped the code, the old operation was automatically removed and a new one was created in its place.

Beginning in this release, when roundtripping such changes, you have the option of retaining the existing operation and having it marked with a stereotype called MergeCandidate. After roundtripping, you can then go through these operation and merge them with the new operation that was created. The new operation body and declaration will then be copied to the existing operation, which will retain any other existing information such as dependencies. The second operation will be discarded. To enable this option, set the value of the property MarkMergeCandidateOperations to True.

Code-centric mode: support in 64-bit version of Rhapsody

You can now use code-centric mode in the 64-bit version of Rhapsody. However, code cannot be generated while in code-centric mode.

Configuration Management integration: renaming/deletion of Rhapsody units

Prior to release 8.3, if you renamed a Rhapsody element that was saved as a separate unit, the name of the file representing the unit would always keep its original name. Beginning in this release, if you configured Rhapsody to use the integration with Rational Team Concert (using the CMTool property), then when you rename a model element that is a unit, you will be asked whether you want to also change the name of the underlying file. This behavior can be controlled by the property RenameActivation.

Similarly, if you delete a unit, you will be asked whether you want to also delete the underlying file. The deletion behavior is controlled by the property DeleteActivation.

Modeling: “satisfy” stereotype in non-SysML projects

The “satisfy” stereotype, previously available only in SysML projects, can now be applied to dependencies in all Rhapsody projects.

Modeling: ownership of dependency between two other elements

Beginning in release 8.3, an element can be the owner of a dependency between two other elements. Among other uses, this makes it possible to create a dependency between two read-only model elements.

Modeling: selection of type for flowport

Now, when you try selecting a type for a flowport, the dialog remembers the last location used, allowing you quicker access to the relevant elements.

 

Rhapsody repository files: move to XML format

Beginning in release 8.3, the files used to save Rhapsody models are in XML format. To help differentiate between the new repository files and the repository files used in previous releases, the letter x has been added to the file extensions. For example, the main file for the project now uses the extension .rpyx instead of .rpy. Existing projects that are saved in version 8.3 of Rhapsody will be saved in the new format.

Statecharts: multi-line display of code for entry action, exit action, and internal transitions

Prior to release 8.3, in the graphical compartment used to display the code for a state’s entry action, exit action, and internal transitions, each of these items was allocated a single line, regardless of how long the code was.

Beginning in this release, there is an option to have the compartment display multiple lines of code when required. For individual states, this can be set in the Display Options dialog. If you want to set this as the default behavior in all your projects, you can add the following property to your site.prp file with a value of True: General::Graphics::SupportMultiLineCompartment.

Support for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.2

Rational Rhapsody can now be run on version 7.2 of Red Hat Enterprise Linux.

TestConductor/ATG: information about model elements not covered

In TestConductor and ATG, requirement coverage results now also include information about the model elements that are not covered.

TestConductor: testing of private/protected operations

Beginning in this release, TestConductor includes an option for testing private and protected operations by calling them directly. See the example and related documentation in the TestConductor Testing Cookbook.

TestConductor: user guide for assertion-based testing

The documentation for TestConductor now includes a new user guide (TestConductor_User_Guide.pdf) that deals only with C/C++ assertion-based testing mode. The existing user guide (RTC_User_Guide.pdf) now deals only with animation-based testing mode (Ada, Java, and C/C++).

User Interface: enhanced dialog for setting display options

Many element types now use a common tab-based dialog for setting display options.

User Interface: use of new combo box for filtering

A number of dialogs now use a new combo box that dynamically filters list elements as you type.

XMIToolkit: UML 2.4.1 namespace

XMIToolkit now recognizes the UML 2.4.1 namespace

XMIToolkit: activities with horizontal swimlanes

Now, when importing activities that contain horizontal swimlanes, the swimlanes are rotated so that they can be brought into Rhapsody.

In the next week we will test 8.3 ourselves and check compatibility with our RXF.

Happy modeling with Rhapsody in 2018!

Walter van der Heiden (wvdheiden@willert.de)

Your flight is delayed….. No

December 24, 2017 / / 0 Comments

Story of my life…

People who fly often, like I do, know that there is always a big risk that something is happening. Either on your airport, or on the airport where your plane came from or the airport where your plane is heading to. Also the plane is a mechanical and electronic device with software in it. I repeat…. with software in it.

There is a lot that can go wrong there and, experience shows, that will go wrong. A lot is mostly safety stuff, flying would be possible but safety precautions prevent that. And that is a good thing. Flying is safe because we care a lot about safety.

That all is apart from other annoyances. Expensive mediocre food, people who think they are alone in the airplane and many more. But in spite of all that…I still love flying.

This BLOG is about Rhapsody isn’t it?

Yes, yes, it is. I mix stories about my life that mostly consists of traveling the world to spread the word about Rhapsody and some technical stories about Rhapsody itself.

Today we had a discussion with my colleagues from development about Container Classes in Rhapsody. Container classes are Classes that have a 1:* relationship with another class. (See picture) So Class ProductDatabase has a 1:* relation with the Class Product. What does that mean? And especially for the Code Generation in Rhapsody. That depends on the language you are using in Rhapsody.

OK. in ‘C’ first.

relationsDiagram.JPG

In ‘C’ the 1:1 association or aggregation between A and B mean that you have a pointer to B in your A class (struct) A composition will have a complete struct B inside A.  The “*” relation will generate a RiCCollection B. What is a RiCCollection? This is basically an Array where items of “B” can be stored. You don’t know where the items are stored so when you are searching through your collection you will have to look in every item in the collections and compare to see if you found the right one. (On average you have to search half of the array) When that is no problem you can use this. There is a property you can set “Ordered” that will create a linked list instead of just an array (a RiCList). That means you still have to search through half the list (on average) to find a specific item but you can order the items to find them quicker. Here is the code belonging to the 3 relations in C and in C++:

The “qualify” field will allow you to select one of “B”‘s attributes as a key. (It creates a RiCMap). The items are stored in a balanced binary tree, storing takes a while since the tree might have to be re-balanced again, but searching is way faster, on average 2log(n) (For searching 1024 items you need to compare a maximum of 10 times)
You can also just use multiplicity to do this, just create a 1:10 relation and you will have a static array of 10 “B”‘s that you can use in the same way.These constructs do not only are generated inside the structure that represents your class, there are also functions generated (Yes also in case of the static array!) to add items, to delete items, to delete the complete structure and depending on the kind of container some search functions.

What about ‘C++’?

C++ does not know Container Classes by itself but the Standard Template Library does. Since not all compilers support the STL, there are also non-STL container classes.

The property:

CPP_CG::Configuration::Containerset

can be set to:

  • OMContainers, OMContainer, OMList and OMMap
  • STLContainers, vector, list and map
  • OMUContainers, OMUContainer, OMUList and OMUMap

As you can see there are even Templateless versions for the poor amongst us that use a compiler that does not support templates. The STL versions use list, vector and map from the STL. The same functions are available, in ‘C++’ they are all inherited from the container type. Something to keep in mind is that searching the structure will have a different way if using iterators.

Now where’s the drawback?

There is no real drawback here, the only thing is that this will use memory. But there are enough properties to limit that to just the amount you need. The routines are consuming some of your ROM as well of course. But they make your life easier. A lot easier. But check your map file to see what is used there. TODO- pictures from the advanced trainings, list of the functions in C and the different iterators in C++.

The model I used to make the pictures is here: ContainerClasses

OK, that’s it for today!

Happy Holidays! And have fun modeling with Rhapsody!

Walter van der Heiden (wvdheiden@willert.de)

Time to Evaluate!

November 11, 2017 / / 0 Comments

Getting nostalgic

In the days of Windows XP (Who’d ever thought I would say that I gladly wanted to go back to XP…) installations were easy. Your PC basically belonged to you and the OS would not interfere in anything you do.
How different is that now. Since Vista (may it burn in …..) we are plagued with an OS that tries to force its will upon us. And installing a complex environment like Rhapsody and a few add-ons becomes a nightmare.
We used to let people install everything during a one day training. Install took about 30 minutes and would work 99% of the time.
Now it takes hours and the success rate is 50% or so. Even with our own installer, install manual and physical presence of somebody that “knows what he is doing” it is just too difficult to get everything running reliably. Have I already mentioned that I hate Windows?

Brave new world…

At Willert we use Macs. Since 10 years, give or take, we have kicked out our Windows laptops and buy expensive Macs, just to prevent us from hiring multiple sysadmins to keep our stuff running.
Unfortunately, IBM, (a large Apple user itself ! ), does not deliver Rhapsody on a Mac. Yes there is an Eclipse plugin but that is just a “facade” plugin. It calls the Rhapsody DLL’s to do the real work. It won’t work on Linux or Mac OS. Duh…
So we use VmWare (we kicked out Parallels because they’ve become too greedy) to run Windows on our Macs. Works OK. So we are used to virtualize.
IBM has now taken this virtualization to a new level. You can have images that you can instantiate and distribute.
So after installing all tools and testing that they work correct, we can now let other people access it using Remote Desktop Connection. This will work from a Windows PC (It is built-in there) and from a Mac (download Microsoft Remote Desktop for free from the App-Store) And apparently even on a Linux Computer, you have to download a 3rd party tool there but it works.
Using RDC requires an internet connection but not an extremely fast one, it only transfers the screen using compression.

Provisioning an Image

Once an image is provisioned, you will receive data on how to access it:

  • IP address, mostly 169.x.y.z
  • Login name, mostly administrator
  • Password,8 character random generated

On a Windows PC

It is pretty easy on Windows, everything that you need is built-in. In the menu under “Windows accessories” you will find “Remote Desktop Connection”.

RDC1.JPG

This is how that looks. First you click on “Show Options”.

RDC2

After “Computer” you type in the given IP address, 169.x.y.z:3333 (Important, the 3333 is a port number and needs to be there.)
After “Username” you type “administrator” (Or the username that was given to you.
The password will be asked when you connect. As you see it is possible to store the login credentials on your PC. You might want to do that, it is easier to restart your image.
Click on Connect and RDC will now ask you for your password. Copy it from the data you have received.

rdc3

Then Windows gets suspicious about the certificate of the WebSite. It will display it. You have to tell Windows that it is OK, otherwise…. no go… so click on “View certificate”

rdc4

Then click on “Install Certificate”

rdc5

This is OK, click “Next”

rdc6

Again click “Next”

rdc7

 

And now on “Finished”.

rdc8

The Certificate is now installed, you only need to do this once.

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On a Mac

You first need to download and install the RDC App from the App store. App Store iconApp store RDC

Click on “install” and then on “open”. Confirm that you trust Microsoft and RDC starts.Mac RDC1.png

Click on “+” (“New”) and fill in the credentials you were given.MAC RDC2.png

  • Connection name, You can give your connection a logical name.
  • PC name, the IP address that you were given, i.e. 169.x.y.z:3333 (The 3333 is mandatory)
  • User name, the name given, mostly “administrator”
  • Password, what you were given
  • The rest can be changed if you like. Lower resolution and colors mean less data.

Now just close the window and press “Start” with your image selected.

And now?

Your image will be ready and started. Login is automatically, you can start using the tools that are installed in the image.

Images are valid for a certain period of time, I’m still trying out the facility so I can not say how long this is exactly.

So contact me when you want to try Rhapsody and our tools, I will provide you with an image.

Happy evaluating with Rhapsody!

Walter van der Heiden (wvdheiden@willert.de)

 

 

A380

November 6, 2017 / / 0 Comments

I have spent a lot of my time in airplanes, certainly more than a whole month. That is a lot of time. I used to be afraid of flying due to an “unlucky” experience when flying from Austria back to Rotterdam.
That flight had everything, storm, and I mean a real serious storm, a broken of landing, emergency landing on another airport, crying flight attendants, not to mention the other passengers.
It took me a while to get over that but since the first US flight I don’t care anymore. Or better, I like flying. In spite of hundreds of flights, I still like it very much.

As said I’ve seen lots of different airplanes, Boeing 737, 747, 767, 777, 787, Airbus 319, 320, 330, 340 and the 380. Also Embraer, Fokker, Dash, Ilyushin, Bombardier and even some smaller ones.

But the A380 is something special. Very very silent and of course: Huge. And I mean, really huge. I’m an engineer, i know how planes fly but even I am wondering how something this size can just fly.

My Facebook timeline told me this morning that it was exactly 5 years ago since I went to India. The flight was via Dubai so I’ve flown with the A380 of Emirates from Schiphol to Dubai and back. I was already impressed that time.

This time i flew from Paris (CDG, the worst airport in the world) to Miami with Air France. But… Business Class (Yes!!!) So upper deck and a real lot of space.

So… back in the USA. After just a bit over 3 weeks…. This time I have an AUTOSAR conference in San Jose (November 7-8) and the IBM IoT CE Conference in New Orleans (November 14-17)

I will be speaking on both events and on November 17 we will have a Rhapsody Workshop.

I hope to see you there!

Happy modeling with Rhapsody

Walter van der Heiden ( wvdheiden@willert.de )

Ask the Master.

October 4, 2017 / / 0 Comments

Or Rhapsody Q&A

A short BLOG entry this time. On Monday, October 9 13:00-14:30 CET, we organize an Ask the Master Webinar. Feel free to join and fire questions about Rhapsody to the Master. (That’ll be me…) Just a small info: It will be in German! (With Dutch accent…)

Ein kurze BLOG heute. Montag 9 Oktober von 13u- 14u30 organizieren wir ein Webinar “Ask the Master”. Meld dich an und werde all deine Fragen über Rhapsody los bei der Guru ( An dem Tag bin ich das…) Es wird in Deutsch sein (Mit Holländischen Akzent)

Ask the Master
Wir laden Sie ein:
Am Montag, den 09.10. /  13.00 – 14.30 zu unserer Websession:
Rhapsody – Questions & Answers
Herr van der Heiden wird Ihnen dieses Mal ganze 1,5 Std zur Verfügung stehen, um Ihre Fragen rund um das Thema Rhapsody zu beantworten und Ihnen Tipps und Tricks verraten.
Die Websession ist kostenlos. Sie müssen sich nur anmelden.
Anmeldung:
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