Generating GraphViz DOT Script in DXL

SystemAdmin - Wed Jun 20 15:17:26 EDT 2012
Interesting stuff - I figured it must be possible. I'm a DXL beginner though, so wouldn't know where to start. I'm just curious really.

As for that tool - I would be very interested in seeing the results. Thanks for sharing!

SystemAdmin - Wed Jun 20 14:58:45 EDT 2012
About 8 years ago I generated such a beast by passing a text file to visio (they took away this ability after visio 2002). Two or three years ago Jeremy Dick previously of Telelogic and now of Traceline introduced me to graphviz which he was using for some unrelated purpose, and I converted the visio dxl into graphviz dxl within a day or so. So yes it is fairly easy and very powerful. It would be even more powerful if the svg format was readily used in companies (Internet Explorer does not support it)

When I am bored I play with doors visualisation - amazing what you can do. I have a website that I have half finished - where you could download the tool, assuming I told people where it is!! I will attempt to finish my website in the next couple of weeks and make it available then. Putting the prototype of the visualiser on the web site defeated my energy levels especially using the right security settings. Here's a picture of the free tool assuming anyone's interested.

Regards,

Richard

SystemAdmin - Wed Jun 20 19:55:05 EDT 2012
I also thought of Jeremy's work in this area with his DOORS TraceLine add-on product - it's worth having a look at http://www.integrate.biz/traceline/

But lets face it - DOORS should have been supporting interactive graphical views of Project, Module, Link, Object and Attribute schemas 10 years ago. I wait to see what the "DOORS Next Generation" product might offer in this space - should I hold my breath?

OurGuest - Thu Jun 21 06:42:37 EDT 2012
With IBM depreciating the value of help files how can you possible believe that they will improve the users life in other areas?

OurGuest - Thu Jun 21 06:42:37 EDT 2012
With IBM depreciating the value of help files how can you possible believe that they will improve the users life in other areas?

Mathias Mamsch - Wed Jun 20 17:35:18 EDT 2012

The problem is, that iterating the links of a database can take hours to complete, depending on the size of the project you want to evaluate. Therefore I would not suggest you write a DXL script that will directly dump information to a graphvis file, because then you have to nail the layout right away. If you want to have another layout or experiment with graphvis you would need to reiterate the links.

Therefore my suggestion would be to make two tools (which can be combined later), one for just dumping all the links, which is pretty easy:
 

... see attached file dumpLinksExample.dxl ...

Then once you have all the links dumped to a file (you can dump information about the objects too), you can calculate statistics on it. I attached an example file, that shows how to read the links from the file back to an array, and make statistics on the array, e.g. count source/target module pairs and the number of links that are between them. You can do this in any language, I show a way of how to do that in DXL.

... see attached file linkStatistics.dxl ...

Well and from there finally you can generate your dot file. To draw a picture of the modules that link to each other you would want something like that

ModuleA -> ModuleB
ModuleB -> ModuleC
ModuleD -> ModuleC

which you can now enrich with whatever additional information you like, e.g. the link module that is used or the number of links, or the number of requirements in each module, etc. But that really depends on your use cases.

Hope that helps you to start. Best regards, Mathias

Mathias Mamsch, IT-QBase GmbH, Consultant for Requirement Engineering and D00RS

SystemAdmin - Thu Jun 21 11:32:52 EDT 2012
Hi,

This has already been developped in the context of Requirements Management Framework addins ... Interactive usage of Graphviz allowing to display interactive tracability graphs in DOORS with operations based on graphic views (modules,objects,model) ...

I developped also some less sophisticated scripts outside of RMF to vizualize graphs

Luc

SystemAdmin - Thu Jun 21 11:46:41 EDT 2012
That looks very interesting. Could you provide a link to that addon? I searched the IBM product page and strangely enough couldn't find it.

llandale - Thu Jun 21 12:57:44 EDT 2012
You may also eschew looking at all the links and decide instead to find all the link modules and map based on the existence of link-sets therein. You may also want to find all the LinkSetPairings (LinkModuleDescriptors in DXL) in all the folders. This should produce a "should" mapping, even if there are not any links yes (e.g. from the new Test module to the SubSys spec).

-Louie

adevicq - Tue Jun 26 06:08:41 EDT 2012
All,
You can find attached a first attempt of a (simple) graph generator for GraphViz.
The graph displays the linksets defined in the current folder/project and its children.

Alain

adevicq - Tue Jun 26 06:31:15 EDT 2012
removed a bug...

SystemAdmin - Tue Jun 26 11:13:47 EDT 2012
Hello,

when running the getLinksetGraph.dxl what is the trick to view the results in a readable format; meaning enlarging the view. I tried to modifying the "size" with limited success. Thank you.

-Jim

SystemAdmin - Fri Jun 29 10:33:33 EDT 2012
A link to my website, where you can download my spin on doors with graphviz. The website is driving me around the bend, but the downloads should work ok!
http://www.chalford.net/Downloads.aspx

adevicq - Mon Jul 02 09:07:33 EDT 2012
Hi,

I have executed you installer and I don't see anything new in PSPad (no new menu as shown on your site).
FYI I am on W7...
Is there anything I can do?
Regards,
Alain

SystemAdmin - Wed Jul 04 12:16:39 EDT 2012
It worked well in rehersals. i.e. on my machine, buit that can hardly be considered a massive test. I'll exercise thte tool a bit more.

The pspad addin, contains a stable pspad variant with the dxl addin which allows you to interpret the errors and return them to the log window and to pass the current file as an <#include> wrappered file to the clipboard.

Whilst wrappering this all up I thought I'd play around with self extracting zip files and create an autohotkey generated script file for automatically installing the addin to an existing version of pspad.

The tool also checks that you have DOORS on your machine and links to the relevant dxl help file in the install directory. such that you can use it within pspad.

The tool does not install if you do not have doors on your machine, this may be a over the top.

I'll have a look at the install again with a view to simplifying it rather than seeing what can and can't be done. I suspect it may be failing silently for some reason, possibly because your machine does not allow unsigned exes to run.

If you have a specific error message then please let me know.
You can send me a personal email through my website.

The pspad addin can be built with a few files and some manual tweaking I may add a method to do this as an alternative on my website

adevicq - Wed Jul 04 12:24:03 EDT 2012
OK.
One question: How do you check that DOORS is installed on the machine? Remember that the registry keys are different on Windows 7. Maybe there is a possible issue here...
FYI I have no message when I run the installer.

Regards,
Alain

SystemAdmin - Thu Jul 05 07:50:34 EDT 2012
I tested the tools on another machine and seemed to have problems with the current directory for some bizarre reason. I have changed both tools on my website to cope with this. They should hopefully behave as intended. Note I also had an issue with the autohotkey com library I use to return the errors from DOORS meaning that the errors were not returned properly to the pspad log window, I think its being blocked, which is a bit of a bind as this is the major benefit of using the plugin.
I'll think of an alternative this weekend as although these are free tools I want them to work for at least 99% of people. I have tested on DOORS 9-2 and DOORS 9-3 on Xp and Windows 7. The pspad plugin is not returning the errors correctly on the windows 7 machine. The linksetviewer plugin installed everything, but sometimes created a shortcut to the temporary install area not where you chose to install the plugin. You will need to download the tools again

adevicq - Mon Jul 09 16:37:19 EDT 2012
Hi,
I made the setup manually for the DXL "compiler" and DXL returns the errors as expected.
The only thing I do not have is your "script" menu...

Alain

adevicq - Tue Jun 26 06:31:15 EDT 2012
removed a bug...

SystemAdmin - Fri Jun 29 10:33:33 EDT 2012
A link to my website, where you can download my spin on doors with graphviz. The website is driving me around the bend, but the downloads should work ok!
http://www.chalford.net/Downloads.aspx

SystemAdmin - Mon Oct 01 13:17:33 EDT 2012
Hi, I'm finally getting back to checking this out.

I tried the script, but first I had to comment out the bit asking if I have GraphViz installed, and the last line where it runs GraphViz, because I want to take the generated file and run it on a different machine.

Where is the file saved? I ran the script (Tools > Edit DXL > Load > Run) from the root of the project, and it output what looks like all the folders in the project. The output didn't show anything that looked like GraphViz - is that correct?

Then I searched for any .gv files on the machine, but there were none.

I thought maybe the temp file would be deleted after the run, so I set the filename to always be DOORS_Graphviz.gv. But after running, I still couldn't find the output file.

Peter_Albert - Tue Oct 02 06:00:34 EDT 2012

> Where is the file saved?

sFileName = tempFileName ".gv"

which on my PC translates to something like C:\DOCUME~1\Albert\LOCALS~1\Temp\DP9.gv.

> Then I searched for any .gv files on the machine, but there were none
I assume that Windows search does not search the Temp folder, that's why you did not find the file.

> I set the filename to always be DOORS_Graphviz.gv. But after running, I still couldn't find the output file
If you didn't specify the complete path then the file could end up anywhere (I don't know where the default location for output files without complete path is actually defined). If you specify the complete path, you have to escape the backslashes like in

sFileName = "C:\\Documents and Settings\\Albert\\Desktop\\DOORS_Graphviz.gv"

>output what looks like all the folders in the project. The output didn't show anything that looked like GraphViz

Are you using linkeset pairings? The script only analyses the linkset pairings, not the actual links in the Modules. If you use the default link Module all the time, then you only get the module and folder list

Regards,

Peter

SystemAdmin - Tue Oct 02 12:33:15 EDT 2012
Peter,
Thank you for your informative reply!

I have DOORS running on a Windows Server 2008 machine, so the paths are different. I couldn't find a Temp folder anywhere. The reason we're running it like this is because it's the only way to allow people in different offices to access the system. The database won't work over a WAN, only over a LAN, so my colleagues in different offices have to log in via Remote Desktop Access. That's a different thread though...

Anyway, I set the path to a specific location as you suggest, escaping the backslashes, and it works fine. It generates a nice GV file, which renders to a very complex digraph!

It turns out that the DXL output window does not show all the content that goes into the saved file. The saved GV file contains all the correct syntax.

However, I will need to try and make changes to the DXL. The resulting graph uses labels on the joining lines to represent which Link Module is used. Albert, in answer to your question, we have been very strict in using Link Modules to corral links in an organised way (I learned that on a training course). The way the DXL works now, the labels are repeated on every line, which gives rise to a very complex and repetitive graph. I agree it is best to analyse what Linksets are set up, rather than analyse the actual links.

See the attached for a fake example of what is being shown now. The labels are repeated. I will reply to this post with another example - only one attachment possible on this forum, sadly.

SystemAdmin - Fri Jun 29 10:33:33 EDT 2012
A link to my website, where you can download my spin on doors with graphviz. The website is driving me around the bend, but the downloads should work ok!
http://www.chalford.net/Downloads.aspx

kabr - Thu Apr 25 03:32:21 EDT 2013

Richard,

I just downloaded your linkset viewer, but it refuses to install with my DOORS V9.4 although it says that it's looking for DOORS 9.2 or higher.

Do you maybe have an updated version available?

Thanks

Karl

kabr - Thu Apr 25 03:32:21 EDT 2013

Richard,

I just downloaded your linkset viewer, but it refuses to install with my DOORS V9.4 although it says that it's looking for DOORS 9.2 or higher.

Do you maybe have an updated version available?

Thanks

Karl

Richard_Good - Thu Apr 25 08:33:48 EDT 2013

I should remove the registry check and just give a warning (it won't work with pre version 9) It does try and check for 9.4 and 9.5, obviously something unexpected has happend with the registry settings maybe IBM use a differrent key or I have introduced a typo into the script. I do not have 9.4 and 9.5 to play with at the moment. You can probably trick the install by installing the wrappered msi direct, maing sure that the dxl references the encrypted inc files correctly and making sure that the dot.exe is in the path (this will be in the bin folder of graphviz). I will try and tweak this on the weekend, if I get 5 mins.

Richard

Richard_Good - Sat Apr 27 09:51:53 EDT 2013

Looks like I was having a bit of an issue with 64 bit operating systems not windows 7 - I need to know where the doors executable is to create the shortcut to the Linkset Viewer (I do this by looking in the registry), many users even some of those who float around here cannot create their own personal menus so it is desirable. Note I have no means of testing the update at the moment, but am about 80% certain it works.

Download the tool again from http://www.chalford.net/Downloads.aspx#Linkset_Viewer to see if the issue is sorted. Please let me know if it's not and I'll have another go one weekend.

Note that I have added an SVG option (clicking on the nodes will open the modules in DOORS), this option will work with all browsers except Internet Explorer (IE9 might work, earlier versions won't)

Visualisations of links (between objects and modules) is one of DOORS major weak points, I had until I got distracted by other projects a nearly complete visualisation tool of this sort, no real interest a couple of years ago so I never pursued it. If anyone is interested I could maybe resuscitate it.

Richard

kabr - Tue Apr 30 03:41:06 EDT 2013

Same problem. Trying to run the installer I get:

"This utility requires DOORS 9-2 or higher. DOORS 9-2 was not found on your system"

Karl