Tuesday 29 September 2009

RI Triggers

In my experience, one of the more misunderstood aspects of Gen development is RI triggers, and the impact of making a change in the data model.

In many cases, users think that they only need to regenerate the RI triggers once they have made their data model changes. Unfortunately it is more complex than that.

The correct process is:

1) Implement any changes to table or column names in the data structure
2) Run the Ref. Integrity Process (accessed from the toolset Design menu) to synchronise the technical design RI constraints with the data model
3) Generate the affected RI triggers
4) Re-generate all action blocks that call the re-generated RI triggers
5) Install re-generated code

Steps (1) and (2) can either be performed separately or accomplished using the Retransformation tool.

The reason why you need to regenerate the action blocks that call the RI triggers is that the code generated for a DELETE, DISASSOCIATE, TRANSFER, etc. depends on the RI rules in the model. If these rules change (for example changing a relationship from cascade delete to pendent delete), then the action blocks require regeneration as well as the RI triggers.

Tuesday 22 September 2009

Where is your source code?

For your Gen applications, the answer is of course that it is stored in the Gen encyclopaedia. But what about your non-Gen code like:

  • External Action Blocks
  • OLE files
  • Bitmaps, icons
  • DDL
  • Documentation
  • etc.

Unfortunately we often come across projects that do not adequately manage the non-Gen source code, probably because they do not have this issue with the Gen code. There are cases of projects where they have lost their EAB source code and do not even have documentation for what the EAB did apart from the stubs in the Gen model.

Another common instance is where you use an OCX control in a GUI design. Gen creates a .ole file in the local workstation model sub-directory which contains properties for the OCX control. However this is not uploaded to the model, so if you delete the local model directory and have not saved the .ole files elsewhere, they are lost!

You should therefore take care that all project source code is properly managed. This could be as basic as ensuring that the files are stored centrally in a place where they will not be deleted, either accidentally or as part of a housekeeping routine.

Even better, the external code should be properly versioned controlled. There are many tools for this, ranging from simple and free source code control tools to more sophisticated products. Our own XOS tool has been designed specifically for managing Gen externals, including support for automatically versioning .ole files when a subset is uploaded to the encyclopaedia.