It's not going so well.

[Stuart Hemming]

I'm ready to give up and to just resign myself to the fact I'll be using the 'old' method of using OA for sometime.

I thought I'd have a go at trying to create a model from scratch.

Looking in the docs wasn't much help; there's lots in there about creating a model from and existing DB but nothing about starting from the beginning.

I worked out how to create an empty model and then tried adding a new object. I added the class ok and even a couple of properties. The I checked out the properties of the properties (still with me?). I had a string value in my class that I wanted to be nullable so I tried changing the relevant property from 'false' to 'true'. OA had a think then told me that the value was invalid. Looking at the detail of the error actually revealed an OutOfMemory exception.

Then I tried to add an association between that class and another I'd created. That didn't work 'cos OA insists that tables must exist for the classes before a relationship can be defined. OK, thinks I, I can map to the table and just update it as I go. Selecting the class in the diagram then opting to map to a new table presented me with an empty form. I would have expected at least an /attempt/ to determine the type and nature of the fields to be added to the table from the class.

I wonder why the ability to create an empty domain model is available when so little of what I need to do with it seems to work.

OK. Maybe I'm wrong and it does do all of the things it should. I like to think I'm relatively bright, bright enough to work my way around a piece of software like this at least, but if this /is/ ready for use in the manner suggested by the availability of the "Create Empty Domain Model" option, it's very well hidden.

-- 
Stuart

[Jordan]

Hello Stuart Hemming,

Thank you for writing.
We are still catching up with the documentation for the forward mapping functionality of the visual designer. We will have this functionality fully documented soon.

I tried many scenarios, but unfortunately I could not get any exception when changing a string property to be nullable.

Indeed, with the currently released version it is not possible to add associations between classes that are not mapped to tables. We are currently working on that, and are planning to release this functionality with the first SP release for Q2 2010.
About mapping new classes to a new table, we will be improving that to suggest default columns, etc. for the new table. Again, this will be available with the first SP release.

Greetings,
Jordan
the Telerik team

[Stuart Hemming]

Jordan,

> We are still catching up with the documentation for the forward mapping functionality
> of the visual designer. We will have this functionality fully documented soon.
Well, if you want someone to give it a user POV beta read, let me know.

> I tried many scenarios, but unfortunately I could not get any exception when changing a
> string property to be nullable.
You will find a swf movie of how I created the error here. FWIW, I'm operating using VS2K8 on Win7x64.

> release this functionality with the first SP release for Q2 2010.
And I look forward to seeing it.

-- 
Stuart

[Jordan]

Hello Stuart Hemming,

Thank you for the video.
I was able to reproduce the exception finally.
It turned out to be two problems actually:
1. some weird issue in the .net 2.0 runtime (that causes the OutOfMemory exception)
2. the visual designer is not correctly resolving types (and this is needed in order for the code generation to succeed),  for example if you enter "double" this should be resolved to "System.Double"

I have added this issue to our TODO list and we will be fixing it ASAP

Greetings,
Jordan
the Telerik team

[Stuart Hemming]

Cool. Well at least you've got a note of the problem.

-- 
Stuart