Domain Model UI Questions

[George]

Hi everyone.  I've been trying to update my ORM to a Domain Model, and let me tell you, that was no fun.  The upgrade destroyed all relationships between tables (No Targets!).  No fun at all.  Anway, I decided to create a clean one, and that worked out okay, but have some questions....

1)  I have a Customer table and a CustomerAddress table.  There are five different FK's to CustomerAddress from customer, for five different address types.  By default (old and new), the orm creates "CustomerAddress1, CustomerAddress2.... etc, under customer.  In the old ORM, it was simple to identify which one was which (and thus rename).  In the Domain Model, there is NOTHING in the GUI that shows what they are .  I have to open the underlying .cs file to find out, and then go back to the gui and rename.  That's kind of dumb, isn't it?  Is there another way to identify them.  There is nothing in properties, that's for sure, nor is there anything in properties under the OpenAccess Model Explorer.  There are properties for them, but none that identify at least source and target fields.  Just that would be helpful.

2)  My database contains about 150 tables (Thank God their aren't any SP's).  Even compiling everything into one file, the GUI and updates to the GUI are pretty darn slow.    It's also a visual nightmare with all the association lines going back and forth.  It would be nice if I could create a subset diagram off of the main one, that just holds a collection of objects I want to work on.  For example, all (or most) tables related to the Customer Table only, in one diagram,  Another of tables related to the Item table.   There would be overlap, but as they would be subsets of the main diagram, it could be kept in sync, and the UI should be faster.  Even if they were temporary, it would be helpful.

3)  The Context file that is generated pluralizes all the routines.  I've never understood this philosphy and am totally against it.  You can control this now with classes, fields, and properties, but there is apparently no control for the context file that is generated.  Why would I want a routine called AccountActivities for my table AccountActivity.  I understand what its trying to do, I just don't like or agree with it.

4)  The "Locate in Diagram" feature doesn't work well at all.  At least on bigger models.It apparently can do horizontal position fairly well, but fails miserably on vertical position.

If it sound like I am trying to trash the Domain Model, I apologize, that's not my intent.  I'm just finding some of the new stuff, a little tweaky and I'm hoping at least some of this stuff is being looked at.

Thanks in Advance!

Greg

[Zoran]

Hello Greg Figueroa,

 We are glad that you have tried the Domain Model out. You input is valuable, for us it mostly means that we should expose more materials that explain more of the usability of the designer. At least for two of your issues that is definitely the case. My answers are following:

1. In order to get detailed information about a certain association in the Domain Model Designer, you should look into the Mapping Details Editor. It can display four categories of information about a certain Entity: Table Mapping, Associations, Inheritance Mappings, Stored Procedures for CUD operations. You should select the second one, for the associations. There you can see the column information about each of the associations, therefor resolve the purpose of any every one of the overlapping associations. I am attaching a screenshot for easier presentation of the above.
2. This is definitely a valid point and it is something we have on our plans since we released the designer. We plan on making the possibility to create different sections of the diagram in different files. 
3. Customers like yourself were exactly the reason why we changed the code generation of the context class for the Q2 release. Let me shed some light on the above: The context is now partly manageable from the designer or more precisely from the OpenAccess Model Explorer. There you can rename you IQueriable End-points as you desire. I am attaching a screen shot for this window as well.
4. This is something I did not completely understand I admit. The locate in diagram works fine and we have tested it with a diagram of 750 entities. Indeed the located entity is sometimes in the center of the screen and sometimes in the angles, but I would not categorize that as "not working at all". It should always be on the screen when you execute this command. However if you feel this is different on your side, please give us some hints for reproducing the behavior. You can be sure that any malicious behavior found will be fixed for the very next release.

I hope my answer helps you to get along with the new Domain Model approach and start using it in your applications sooner or later. If you have any further questions/suggestions feel welcomed to share them with us.

Kind regards,
Zoran
the Telerik team

[George]

Hi Zoran,

Thank your for the response.  As a followup...

1. I did figure this out, however, it's a little un-user friendly.  I say that only because moving back and forth between the Diagram, an entities properties, and the Mapping Details Editor makes the Mapping Details Editor "jump" around, or reset back to the table mappings.  I think it would be helpful that even if I move between entities or properties within entities, that the Mapping Editor stays on the tab I am looking at, and not automatically jump back to table mappings.
2. I want to just say here that I want to be clear.  I don't want completely seperate models.  I believe you can do that now.  I am talking about "sub" models off of the main one, to make things faster and easier to work with.  This would be a great feature and I hope you guys figure something like this out.
   NOTE:  That goes for the Data Services Wizard that also does pluralization, and by the way, does it even if I rename the entity in the model.
3. It's nice there is a place to change them, but it's dissappointing that I have to go do it manually to all of my tables.  Just give me an option to select plurilization or signularization when the Model Generates the context.
4. I need to clarify my statement.  You are right, and I was wrong to say it "doesn't work very well at all", and I appologize, it does work, except for one circumstance.  If the entity is on the far left of the diagram, it positions itself to where you have to scroll to the left to find the entity.  You might want to see if you can duplicate this.  I also expanded the width of the entity I am encountering this with, so that may have something to do with it.  Also, when it does correctly find an entity, if the entity is larger than the viewable area, it places the view in the center of the entity.  I find this kind of wierd, but this may be just be my preference.  I would think it should place itself at the top of the entity. 
5. This is new, but I wanted to know if you have had any reports.  A couple of times now, when I go into my model, a table will suddendly not have a mapping in the diagram anymore.  It has happened more than once, and I don't recall clicking on anything that would cause it, but that doesn't mean I didn't do just that.  Has anyone else reported something like this?  If it is something glitching, its a scary glitch.

      5a.  I am going to open this up in a ticket, but I have encountered an added problem to #5.  After I recreated the entity
             for the table that no longer was in the diagram, it seemed to be in the diagram just fine, and the underlying code 
             looks like all the other entities, but when I run the Data Services Wizard, it no longer sees this entity.  It acts as 
             though it doesn't exist.  Can you tell me why?

Thanks, Greg

[PetarP]

Hello Greg Figueroa,

 1. We will most certainly consider the possibility of keeping track of the last selected tab instead of always showing the default one as we feel this indeed will be useful.
2. That is exactly what we are targeting.
3. Will another tab much like the option for fields, properties and classes work for you?
4. Thats a bug in the dsl tools and not in Telerik OpenAccess ORM. Unfortunately there is not much we can do regarding that behavior for which I am sorry.
5. No one has yet reported issues like that. Regardless of that fact I went on and tried to reproduce your issue however everything ran perfectly fine on my side. Maybe you did something prior to running the DSW wizard? I will be more than happy to investigate further if you can provide me with some additional steps to replicate the problem.

Greetings,
Petar
the Telerik team