Getting really frustrated with model first design

[Jason]

Hi there

I have been playing with OA pretty solidly for the last 4 days, trying to use the model first methods, but I have been constantly encountering either bugs or "Will be fixed in the next release" issues. After looking over the documentation and videos the following are just making this product unusable for me at the moment

Fixed in the next release
1) Inheritance not working in the designer  (not a show stopper, but painful)
2) foreign keys not being generated

Not sure when fixed
1) Very unstable designer, changing class names, adding/removing properties/ relationships etc, has a very annoying tendency to break the rlink file, and I just don’t have the knowledge xml structure to fix it manually. additionally the pop-up’s like the association editor sometimes work as expected, other times almost all the options are greyed out.
2) I'm not sure if its just me, but the CreateUpdateDDLScript command in the designer and in code just generates Create table scripts for all classes in my design, it doesn’t matter if the tables exist in the database. even if i just create 1 class, map it to a table, deploy it the db and then try the update it still does a create table script.

I wish to use the Artificial Fields and Artificial Types in OA as it is Ideal for what I want to achieve, however I can’t even get to the point of trying this.

I really like the concepts here, so much promise in what is trying to be achieved, but to me it seems like a very early beta product, definitely not a release product. Which surprises me quite a bit considering the usual high standard of terelik's products.

I am hoping that its just me doing things wrong, and that someone can point me to some examples that work for model first design with Artificial Fields and Artificial Types. If not, I'm hoping the next version fixes many of these issues and is released very soon as right now it just doesn’t seem to work properly. 

I am very rapidly coming to the conclusion that I'll just have to go with something else (like nhibernate or something) and try again with OA on my next project

Jason

 

[Jason]

Well I got past one issue at least, the CreateUpdateDDLScript only making Create Table Scripts.

As far as I can work out, if you use a Schema name in the Edit Table dialogue, then the system will not recognise it when trying to do a CreateUpdateDDLScript .

I used dbo as a schema name as I wish to force the "dbo" schema. With it set I can only get Create tables, without it I get the correct Alter tables.

Is there any way to force a schema as well as getting the CreateUpdateDDLScript to work?

regards
Jason

[Ivailo]

Hi Jason,

I understand your frustration after stumbling in these issues in a short period of time. Please accept our apologies for the inconvenience caused. They will be handled with priority for the upcoming releases.

To be specific regarding the issues:

 - The problem with inheritance will be fixed in one of the future releases

 - As for the Visual Designer, if you have issues unrelated to the inheritance problem, let us know and we will do our best to help you achieve your goals. You can even send us the RLINQ file if you believe it’s broken and we can fix it for you, while noting down another priority bug fix in case a problem is causing the incident.

 - Association window can be grey when one or both of the tables involved are mapped with default mapping (Use Default Mapping is checked in the Mapping Details Editor). In order to change that behavior, you have several options:
   o map the Domain Class to a real database table (when using reverse mapping – database first)
   o create a new table with the Create New Table combo box item in the Mapping Details Editor and map the class to it
   o create a default mapping table and then make any change in it

This behavior is mentioned here in the documentation (although not explained thoroughly).
This is already been improved as the associations were re-designed internally in our product and the result of that would be shortly said - you will never see the association editor grayed out in future official releases as of Q3.

 - The problem with altering a table with dbo schema name specified is a bug that was not identified up until now, so please find your Telerik points updated. We will surely address this with high priority for the upcoming release.

As a workaround, we have checked and confirmed that with other schema names ALTER statements are generated where needed, so you can just leave the schema name blank when you want to address the dbo schema and specify other schemas when necessary.

If you have reached the point of defining your artificial types, you can find some explanations and samples here.

Do not hesitate to contact us if you have any other issues or questions. 

All the best,
Ivailo
the Telerik team

[Jason]

Hi Ivailo

Thanks for the feedback. Unfortunately I have decided to go with NHibernate for this project. As I stated I really like the concepts in OA, but I dont have the time to deal with the bugs in it for my current project.

I am sure I will try OA again in the future and look forward to trying it again when it seems more stable.

Jason

P.S.

A couple of comments on your post

 - As for the Visual Designer, if you have issues unrelated to the inheritance problem, let us know
I'll try and remember how i caused the bugs
1) when setting up relationships, When i re-named the 1-0 side of the 1-0->many relationship the designer broke and I could not fix it.

 - Association window can be grey
1) I never used the default mapping as it re-named fields that I didnt want it to ("Name" became "nme" etc). The greyed out window happened after the above issue. Even when I deleted all the classes and started again. I had to delete the rlinq file to get them to work.

[Ivailo]

Hello Jason,

Thanks for the valuable information. We are going to test this behavior thoroughly and treat any problem that might occur with high priority.

I hope that future releases of OpenAccess will meet your expectations.

Best wishes,
Ivailo
the Telerik team