The ORM Foundation

Hi All,

I released the February 2010 CTP version of NORMA late last night (around 8:00GMT), and Ken wrote a nice summary and posted it to ORM foundation a few hours later (check the library for details).

Unfortunately, we found a serialization bug this morning that hampers the value constraint international portability feature, so I've slipstreamed an updated version of the release. The code change was minimal (change Min to Max on one line of the serialization code). If you updated on Thursday March 11 before midnight GMT you might want to reinstall.

Hopefully this will not affect too many people as the time window was quite small (sourceforge showed 7 downloads compared to 903 for the October 2009 CTP files).

My apologies for the incovenience, and enjoy the new release.

-Matt

Hi Matt,

Thanks for all your hard work.
I posted your latest release to the Library at 0815 GMT on 12 March 2010.

Ken

Guys,

 This is great news, but I'm just curious, what does "CTP version" mean?

Steve

Also, can you explain what this means, and how I would take advantage of it?

 "Added custom property support to the ORM Model element."

Steve,

CTP means 'Community Technology Preview'. Essentially a beta without a formal committment to a final list.

Custom properties can be added with the 'Custom Properties' extension model available in the Extension Manager dialog. You will then see a 'PropertiesEditor' available in the Properties Window with a model selection. This lets you add properties to different types of ORM elements (FactType, EntityType, MandatoryConstraint, etc). You were previously unable to define and add custom properties directly to the model.

-Matt

Is there a way to add more data types (like "Boolean") to the data types available in custom properties?

No, not at this point. The underlying model allows an enum list, and the support was never finished in the UI, so no one has ever used them.

Of course, being custom, this tool itself doesn't care what you store for data. Just use a string with a default of 'false' and enter 'true' when you need it.

I'm sorry I don't have a better answer at this point. If we do the custom enum work then we'll add boolean support as well.

-Matt