[Middlegen-user] A few suggestions, a potential bug...

[Dean Des Rosiers]

I am new to Middlegen and I really enjoy using it and looking at the code.
It suits our organization’s way of working. I look forward to its continued
improvement.

I address these suggestions to the user list as opposed to the “suggested
features” page since I’m such a new user and may be ignorant of the presence
of certain features.

First I’d like to be able to include a table for viewing in the GUI, but not
generated. This would be perfect for “M:N join tables.” I have such a
table in my project now which I need to manually (in ant, anyway) delete
after it’s generated. The presence of an Entity bean for this table makes
my MVCSoft Persistence Manager (CMP 2.0 engine) very unhappy. This feature
could be accessed from within the table element of the middlegen task:
<table name=”EntityRole” generate=”false”> Naturally, the default would be
“true.” You could also access it from the “table panel” in the GUI via a
checkbox.

Next, I’d like to know if it would be OK to allow the user to pick
java.util.Date in lieu of a java.sql class in the “Java type combo” in the
“property panel”. I’d like to take advantage of the fact that CMP insulates
me from the java.sql package. I’ll be using java.util.Date in my front end
and DTOs, why not drive it through to the Entity bean? Is there something I
’m missing here? Have I been doing it wrong?!

Currently the preferences.xml file contains a lot of good information. I
was actually dragging and pointing and clicking on all my tables every time
I tested my template (I’m working on an MVC-centric CMP 20 template). If
the users and developers feel it’s appropriate, it may be nice to save the x
and y values of the upper left corner of each of those tables in the
preferences file as well. It would be a real time saver for those of us
with a lot of related tables.

Speaking of the preferences file, I have an Entity for which I need to
assign the primary key property’s Java Type to “long” (MVC needs it this
way). This is reflected in the preferences file, but when I ran the
middlegen GUI again, the property’s type was back to java.lang.Integer.
Might be a bug, there.

Sorry about the long message, but I’ve accrued a lot of comments in the last
four days. Back to work!

Dean Des Rosiers

[Aslak Hellesøy]

Hi Dean,

I'm glad to hear that Middlegen helps you get your work done faster. Your
feature requests are really on the spot, so you should post them as
such.I've done that for you now. Here on the list they turn into vapor and
vanish the minute they're read ;-).

Don't be sorry for your long message. If everyone submitted accurate
feedback like this we'll end up with a better tool faster. You seem to have
understood the internals of Middlegen pretty well. If you submit a patch (in
diff form) to SF, it would be even better.

Cheers,
Aslak
-----Original Message-----
From: middlegen-user-***@lists.sourceforge.net
[mailto:middlegen-user-***@lists.sourceforge.net]On Behalf Of Dean Des
Rosiers
Sent: 26. juli 2002 21:12
To: middlegen-***@lists.sourceforge.net
Subject: [Middlegen-user] A few suggestions, a potential bug...


I am new to Middlegen and I really enjoy using it and looking at the code.
It suits our organization’s way of working. I look forward to its continued
improvement.



I address these suggestions to the user list as opposed to the “suggested
features” page since I’m such a new user and may be ignorant of the presence
of certain features.



First I’d like to be able to include a table for viewing in the GUI, but
not generated. This would be perfect for “M:N join tables.” I have such a
table in my project now which I need to manually (in ant, anyway) delete
after it’s generated. The presence of an Entity bean for this table makes
my MVCSoft Persistence Manager (CMP 2.0 engine) very unhappy. This feature
could be accessed from within the table element of the middlegen task:
<table name=”EntityRole” generate=”false”> Naturally, the default would be
“true.” You could also access it from the “table panel” in the GUI via a
checkbox.



Next, I’d like to know if it would be OK to allow the user to pick
java.util.Date in lieu of a java.sql class in the “Java type combo” in the
“property panel”. I’d like to take advantage of the fact that CMP insulates
me from the java.sql package. I’ll be using java.util.Date in my front end
and DTOs, why not drive it through to the Entity bean? Is there something I
’m missing here? Have I been doing it wrong?!



Currently the preferences.xml file contains a lot of good information. I
was actually dragging and pointing and clicking on all my tables every time
I tested my template (I’m working on an MVC-centric CMP 20 template). If
the users and developers feel it’s appropriate, it may be nice to save the x
and y values of the upper left corner of each of those tables in the
preferences file as well. It would be a real time saver for those of us
with a lot of related tables.



Speaking of the preferences file, I have an Entity for which I need to
assign the primary key property’s Java Type to “long” (MVC needs it this
way). This is reflected in the preferences file, but when I ran the
middlegen GUI again, the property’s type was back to java.lang.Integer.
Might be a bug, there.



Sorry about the long message, but I’ve accrued a lot of comments in the
last four days. Back to work!



Dean Des Rosiers

[Aslak Hellesøy]

If you're working on an MVC template, are you only adding @mvcsoft tags, or
are there other modifications too? It would be great if you only added tags.
That way I could add your changes to the "official" cmp20 template if you
post a patch on SF.

Cheers,
Aslak