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After using the designer for a few weeks now, I have a few questions / feature requests:
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Thanks for the suggestions! I've logged feature requests for all of these except the last. You can already do this via the filtering feature in the LightSpeed Model Explorer window -- choose "Show selected" instead of "Show associated" in the drop-down. |
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I still don't see the ability to hide value objects from that view? (showing only entities). Also, there seems to be a bug with the view; entities without tags is shown when you choose to show entities with a certain tag. All entities that contains at least one tag is hidden, but not those without tags.
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Try prefixing your filter text with an exclamation mark ! I suspect the documentation on this hidden feature is on the TODO list for LS3. I'm not sure about the bug regarding tags. Although I have come across that same issue, I didn't consider it a bug becuase some people might want to see that behaviour. Although, if it's impractical to have both behaviours available, I would go for the option of hiding those without tags as you suggest. Thanks, Chris |
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Thomas: value objects should be shown only if they match what you type into the box. E.g. if you type "Add" then an "Address" value object should be shown but a "Name" value object should be hidden. However, value objects that are used by displayed entities will still be shown. E.g. if you type "Add" and the "Adder" entity has a "Name" property, then "Name" will be shown after all. This is on the philosophy that the value object properties are part of the entity, but on reflection it's inconsistent with our hiding of associations, and we should maybe change it. Open to feedback. Re tags: as Chris has noted, this is kind of a judgment call. We went with "no tags = global," partly on the basis that if you hadn't tagged up your model, then entering a tag shouldn't do anything (rather than making your whole model disappear). But we realise this can be surprising because it means we can end up showing things that don't have the selected tag. Re documentation: yes, this is on the to-do list. In the meantime, we have some blog posts up: http://www.mindscape.co.nz/blog/index.php/2009/05/11/navigating-around-models-in-the-lightspeed-designer/ Hope this helps! |
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The reason behind wanting to hide the value objects is that on larger models it can be "messy", and one way of getting a clearer picture of how the entities relates to one and another would be to remove the value objects from the view. I think it should be possible to hide value objects like entities. I see your reason behind the current way of working, but I also think that when you tag up your model, you shouldn't show anything besides what matches the tag. Maybe some kind of if match then show match, otherwise show everything? Thanks for the hints on documentation :)
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I'm sold on the value objects argument and this will be implemented in the next drop of LightSpeed 3. I see your point about the tags thing, and your suggestion sounds sensible, but I'm going to have to think about this a bit more. Thanks for the feedback! |
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Oops, forgot to add: for value objects, the behaviour will be that associated value objects will be shown if you choose "Show associated" or "Show load graph", but hidden under "Show selected" or "Show inheritance." |
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Great, thanks! Any idea on when the next drop of LS3 will be? |
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At the moment these are coming out every few days on an irregular schedule. We hope to automate regular nightly drops soon. Anyway, we've just uploaded a new drop which you can get now from the store. This also includes the fix for the problem you reported with string primary keys. |
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