LLBLGen Pro feature highlights: model views
- by FransBouma
(This post is part of a series of posts about features of the LLBLGen Pro system) To be able to work with large(r) models, it's key you can view subsets of these models so you can have a better, more focused look at them. For example because you want to display how a subset of entities relate to one another in a different way than the list of entities. LLBLGen Pro offers this in the form of Model Views. Model Views are views on parts of the entity model of a project, and the subsets are displayed in a graphical way. Additionally, one can add documentation to a Model View. As Model Views are displaying parts of the model in a graphical way, they're easier to explain to people who aren't familiar with entity models, e.g. the stakeholders you're interviewing for your project. The documentation can then be used to communicate specifics of the elements on the model view to the developers who have to write the actual code. Below I've included an example. It's a model view on a subset of the entities of AdventureWorks. It displays several entities, their relationships (both relational and inheritance relationships) and also some specifics gathered from the interview with the stakeholder. As the information is inside the actual project the developer will work with, the information doesn't have to be converted back/from e.g .word documents or other intermediate formats, it's the same project. This makes sure there are less errors / misunderstandings. (of course you can hide the docked documentation pane or dock it to another corner). The Model View can contain entities which are placed in different groups. This makes it ideal to group entities together for close examination even though they're stored in different groups. The Model View is a first-class citizen of the code-generator. This means you can write templates which consume Model Views and generate code accordingly. E.g. you can write a template which generates a service per Model View and exposes the entities in the Model View as a single entity graph, fetched through a method. (This template isn't included in the LLBLGen Pro package, but it's easy to write it up yourself with the built-in template editor). Viewing an entity model in different ways is key to fully understand the entity model and Model Views help with that.
