The ORM Foundation

Hi, 

Thanks for the latest drop!  I haven't even had a chance to DL it yet, but did read through the release notes in the News forum.

It was good to see that the team is aware of the importance of column and relational name abbreviations; and that this will be most helpful if full descriptive names can be retained in the model - where expedient compromises are not required.  I hope they continue to evolve this two track approach to  model object names.

How about using color to indicate which name form is being used?  Perhaps, an optimal UI would provide the alternate name as a "hint" with mouseover.  having this an easily toggled tool option would make it even better. 

BRN..

I second that! Long and complete descriptions in the conceptual model are very handy, both in having a better idea of what is going on if you look back at older models and models of other people. Also for generating the reports I personally prefer to have normal, non abreviated descriptions. To be able to do this while keeping the names in the database itself short and not to verbose is absolutely a very useful feature and actually one of the things I found to be anoying of the VEA ORM tool. It is possible to abreviate the mappings and such, but not in a really comfortable way to say the least. 
 
As for indicating on the diagram which form is used, I suggest indicating which relations and other elements would result a in large name more or less in the same manner that errors are indicated now: show the warning in the context menu and take the user to the respective fields to define the form or custom name to be used for mapping. 

 

You can currently add a definition to any ObjectType or FactType using the ORM Definition Window. There is a display option on the ORM Designer options page to display the definitions as tooltips. They will also show up as additional reports.

The Definition and Notes windows are currently text only. We are open to adding other forms, including definition hierarchies, as future features. The main usability enhancement for these windows needs to be buttons in the toolwindows to commit the change. You current need to move focus off the window to commit the change, which is a clunky gesture.

 You'll see gradual improvements in column naming in the next drop. Specifically, explicit phrase mapping (in addition to object type names) will be added, and column name generation for identifier columns and columns with multi-step FactType paths (included absorbed column names) will be added as well. Future drops will also include dialogs for the reverse perspective of the current Name Generator Settings Abbreviations dialog, where all abbreviates for a given ObjectType will be visible from the ObjectType. The current dialog requires you to choose a name generation context and specify abbreviations at that point.

-Matt