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Get Started

To start using ShapeChange, follow these steps:

1 Verify that you are using the Java Runtime Environment 11 or later.
2 Download ShapeChange (all platforms; version 2.11.0 14 December 2021) Release Notes
3 Unpack the ZIP archive. An overview of the contents of the archive can be found here. Use a path without whitespace in filenames as the XSLT processor currently used by ShapeChange cannot handle such path names properly.
4 If you plan to process Enterprise Architect models, then the steps to do so depend on the version of Java you’d like to use. If you have a 64bit machine, then we recommend using 64bit Java.
  • 64bit Java:
    • Copy the file SSJavaCOM64.dll located in <EA installation folder>/Java API to <Windows folder>/System32 (on a 64-bit machine).
  • 32 bit Java:
    • Copy the file SSJavaCom.dll located in <EA installation folder>/Java API to <Windows folder>/System32 (on a 32-bit machine) or to <Windows folder>/SysWOW64 (on a 64-bit machine).

NOTE: If you are searching for a 32bit JDK, take a look at AdoptOpenJDK. They provide 32bit OpenJDK for Java 8, 11, and later.

The latest version of ShapeChange has been tested with the 64bit OpenJDK 11 from AdoptOpenJDK.
5 If you plan to create feature catalogues or to apply XSL transformations to output files and would like to use Saxon as XSLT processor, then download the Saxon HE jar from the official maven repository. Each release of ShapeChange uses a specific version of Saxon HE. The table in the Release Notes indicates which version is needed for the ShapeChange release that you are using. Copy the Saxon HE jar to the lib folder of your ShapeChange distribution.

ShapeChange is now ready to be used.

To test the installation, open a shell / DOS box and make the unzipped folder your current directory. Execute

java -jar ShapeChange-2.11.0.jar -Dfile.encoding=UTF-8 -c https://shapechange.net/resources/test/testXMI.xml

You should now see the following information message:

I Application schema found, package name: TestSchema, target namespace: https://shapechange.net/test

After the execution is complete, you will find

  • Log messages are written to test/xmi/log.xml
  • The GML application schema has been created as test/xmi/INPUT/test.xsd
  • The HTML feature catalogue has been created as test/xmi/INPUT/test.html

To test the access to Enterprise Architect models (note that this test requires Enterprise Architect and can be executed only on Windows), execute

java -jar ShapeChange-2.11.0.jar -Dfile.encoding=UTF-8 -c https://shapechange.net/resources/test/testEA.xml

You should see the same results as in the XMI test, except that the results are written into the folder test/ea.

Sample reference results can be found at https://shapechange.net/resources/test/xmi and https://shapechange.net/resources/test/ea.

Configurations for the use of ShapeChange are made available on the examples page.

More information about executing and configuring ShapeChange is in the linked subpages.

If you notice errors when executing the tests, have a look at some of the typical problems in setting up ShapeChange.