Improved EOModel support

From: Mike Kienenberger (mkienen..laska.net)
Date: Sat Sep 06 2003 - 14:59:25 EDT

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    While I'm fairly certain that no one objects to improving the Modeler to
    better import EOModels, does anyone have any objections to extending it to
    export EOModel data formats (along with any other support necessary for
    EOModels)?

    There's no reason why a Modeler tool has to be dependent on any particular
    database layer framework.

    I've been able to create templates to export EOModels into (now Oracle's)
    Toplink, and from what little I've seen, there's no incompatibilty between
    Cayenne models and EOModels. (Which is a Good Thing since a database model
    should be conceptional rather than tied to an implementation.)

    I think the concept of EOModeler is great. I've used EOModels as input to
    templates that generate complete sets of web pages (Searchable/sortable
    Report on Entity, Edit/Create Entity) without intervention. As I mentioned
    above, I've also used EOModels as a replacement for the Toplink database
    mapping GUI and model.

    The Apple implementation is adequate, but non-portable and closed-source.

    I "found" Cayenne's modeler because I just started an Sourceforge project
    (ORModeler) to provide a replacement to EOModeler that was not tied to a
    particular db platform. After having waited several months and having
    performed another day of searches on EOModeler in an attempt to locate an
    EOModel-like project, I started my own. (It seemed like it might be fun to
    write an XML parser, and ORModeler seemed like a good project for doing so.)
    I only found the Cayenne modeler when I went looking to see if there were
    any open source implementations of a plist parser. Imagine my surprise when
    I found an entire Modeler.

    So what I'm hoping is that I can close the ORModeler project and just help
    extend this modeler.

    I think if you add EOModel support, you'll get a lot of interest from the
    WOProject people, especially the WOLips people.

    You might even get some interest from the Toplink user community (assuming
    that there is one -- I can't find any trace of one) since there seems to be
    a lot of agreement that the Toplink Data Mapper Workshop tool is really
    flakey (and coming from an EOModel perspective, it's unnecessarily
    complicated on top of that).

    So since I've only read through the Cayenne user manual, and don't have a
    practical experience with Cayenne or the Cayenne community, please let me
    know if you think this incompatible with the Cayenne project goals.

    >From what I've seen from the output files of Modeler, I don't see anything
    problematic.

    Thanks!

    [I hope this made sense -- I "refactor"ed it several times. That's my new
    word for this week. "Refactor." Sounds much more interesting than
    "Rewrite." :-) ]

    -Mike



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