General Discussion Board - Please post questions, answers, (polite) opinions, and use-cases. Moderators reserve the right to amend the text/subject line or re-categorise the post to better suit the forum configuration if necessary.
Generating Code from SparxSystems EA Data Models
|
04/12/2017
|
migrator Administrator Posts: 63
|
CodeTrigger (CT)generates code from an existing implemented database. The value that the CT EA Add-In may deliver is the ability to generate an application from a relational data model in EA without a connection to a database. The reason for this request is simply that it brings the design of the data model itself into the iterative design cycle. There is a general assumption that the data model design and the database schema is fixed but in my experience, its development goes through several cycles which change may also be influenced by what the users see in the forms.
There is also an assumption that most of your customers have an existing database. In fact I see your tools enabling the creation of next generation line of business applications from industry models. I should know as my day job is the development of corporate and industry models in the Aviation industry. I work for an Airport. In this scenario, the tools required include the Sparxsystems EA, CT for EA and Visual Studio. EA holds the corporate information models and the relational data models. The CT for EA generates the application from the models in EA. Visual Studio builds and runs the application. The process is model--> generate --> build --> review with end users. This process eliminates interaction with a database in the early iterations of application development. When the end user is happy with the prototype forms, the developer may then generate the database schema from the final data model, create the database, populate it with data and test.
The change in process and the productivity gain delivered by this approach and supported by CT for EA is the source for value To achieve the functionality described, CT for EA will be getting its schema information from the EA database. I am happy to work with you to test this functionality
|
|
|
0
link
|
|
04/12/2017
|
migrator Administrator Posts: 63
|
Hi
Thanks for your email. I do understand this feature request, indeed we had it as a possible on our dev board for a while before dropping it. I will put it back on there for further consideration. However, the reason it was not implemented as such previously was because
(a) it would introduce a different wotkflow between EA CodeTrigger and Visual Studio CodeTrigger
(b) Considering that the only difference you would see between successive iterations of changing your model and regenerating with CodeTrigger would be additional menu items (if you added a new table) or an extra column on the grid (if you added an extra field to model), this did not provide a compelling value add to the iterative process.
(c) Some elements in the code are dependent on the exact flavour of the database, ie the code generated to support Skip and Take record paging is different depending on the database version. Therefore the user would be required a more complete database model than otherwise might be the case.
Therefore, although it is an attractive feature, for these reasons it is yet to pass our prioritisation and cost benefit analysis.
I will keep you informed if any decisions are taken about this.
|
|
|
0
link
|