StrataFrame Forum / StrataFrame Database Deployment Toolkit / Enhancement Requests

DDT Enhancement Request

Tim Dol — Mon, 14 Jan 2008 13:46:47 GMT

I have one request to make it easier to manage our release process.

Right now just before we create a new build I create a new DDT Profile for the specific build... I then create a package file from our production profile and then import the tables I want to include with the build. (I may have a number of tables that I don't want to release yet.)

The problem with this is that the 'Deployment Data' and 'Object Name History' isn't part of the import so I have to manually recreate the deployment data, which isn't too bad when you have a few of them, but over the past few months it has grown quite a bit.

I requesting the ability to copy an entire profile to a new profile name... or provide the ability to include the deployment data and object history when you import from an existing package file.

Thanks

Tim

DDT Deployment - Error - Enhancement

Bastian Töpfer — Wed, 28 Nov 2007 09:57:18 GMT

Hi,

one of the things I have been quite annoyed over the time is the fact that the DDT does not tell me which procedure was involved when there was an error during the deployment of a stored procedure.

I can then only guess by the Sql Exception.

It would be great, if you could include that information in the "Deployment Progress" window.

Thanks a lot

3 DDT Update Requests

choyt — Mon, 23 Jul 2007 13:06:37 GMT

Hi Folks

3 things that I find slow me down when using the DDT are

I always create all 3 sprocs. Having it remember that I want all 3 would be excellent
The default stored procedure names are not the ones we use is our standards. Yours are always TABLE_NAME_Insert where ours is table_name_ins (our table names are always capitalized but our sprocs are not). It would rock to be able to setup our own template for this
It always defaults to Optimistic All Fields for update and Off for delete but I always use RowVersion for both.

Obviously non of this is a big deal and is just really boring leg work but the whole point of using products like SF is to save me time and make my code consistent.

Thansk!

MDDeployProgress - To adjust

Rogerio Mauri — Sat, 21 Jul 2007 23:23:27 GMT

Suggestions for StrataFrame.DBEngine

1) To adjust the code of Raise_ProgressChanged for the standard used in the other events.

2) To modify the ForeColor property of prgOverall (MDDeployProgress), therefore the bars are not visible.

Oracle Support

Keith Harvey — Mon, 09 Jul 2007 23:45:25 GMT

It would be a killer app for me to have the DDT work against Oracle. Generate Oracle SPs and Packages, etc. That would be sweet.

Keith

Make installing the sample databases optional

Keith Chisarik — Wed, 27 Jun 2007 09:31:38 GMT

Please.

It took 45 minutes to install at a customers site yesterday. Thanks.

1.6.1 / Infragistics Version

Michael Reese — Wed, 13 Jun 2007 16:07:22 GMT

Quick Question!

Will 1.6.1 be compatible with the latest Infragistics, 2007??

Michael

Infragistics tool upgrade from 6.2 to 7.1

Sridhar Babu — Thu, 14 Jun 2007 01:11:01 GMT

Hi Friends,

I am working on .Net windows (big)application and using Infragistics 6.2
version tool. My management is planning to upgrade to Infragistics 7.1
version and I didn't have any idea about this new version (7.1).
First I want to prepare case study.
1.what are the new features in this new version
2. How to upgrade from 6.2 to 7.1.

thanks
Babu

Setting Table Properties

Howard Bennett — Fri, 08 Jun 2007 15:40:14 GMT

Maybe I'm missing something...but...I'm setting up a new table. If I haven't set the table structure yet, how can I set the concurrency to "Optimistic Row Version" as it requires a version field?

Would it be possible to add that to the row setup dialog - where there would be a checkbox that says something like "Use this field for optimistic row version?" Maybe over there where the "Primary Key" and "Allow Null" are...

Thanks.

P.S. I'm just starting out here - so - bear with me. You'll probably be tired of hearing from me before I get this first little project done. I'm working on a small app that will read our phone system call log and generate reports - seemed like a simple app to get my feet wet w/SQL, VB.Net and StrataFrame.

A couple of minor requests

Ben Hayat — Tue, 01 May 2007 13:41:38 GMT

If you could please consider the followings when editing/adding table columns

a) In data type size, could you allow to delete the zero with keyboard "delete" key, rather trying to grab it with mouse and delete it? I also noticed a bug too. By default it shows 10 for VarChar, but I need to put 40 in there. Since it doesn't let me delete the 1 and zero, I typed 40, which became 4010. But now, it won't allow me to delete the last 1 and zero. It keeps going to 4010.

b) For the "Save" button, could you allow CTRL+S to save?

Thanks!

Field/column type in DDT

Ben Hayat — Tue, 01 May 2007 12:36:17 GMT

It would be a great help if in another screen, we can create a list of "Field/column Types" with their name, data type, size and picture(mask). i.e., SS#, Address, Phone # and etc.

Then when creating table structure, we would have a drop down for "field type" and we could select/point to any of of those predefined types. It's important that DDT, "Points" to the other lookup table rather copy that into this table. This way, if I want to change my address from 30 Char to 40, I'd change that in field type table and do full rebuild of my BOs and redeploy the files. But at least, I don't have to go to every address and change the size.

What do you think guys?

Table columns listing

Ben Hayat — Mon, 30 Apr 2007 16:49:06 GMT

When you click on a table, DDT displays the list columns on the right side pane. Currently it show, Field name, Description, Type, Size and date created.

I'd like to suggest to add "Allow null" property to show as well. This way, I can check all the columns to make sure I did not miss any, rather clicking one at the time.

Thanks!

Using last entry as default when creating columns

Ben Hayat — Mon, 30 Apr 2007 16:35:01 GMT

To SF Team;

Working on DDT, when creating columns for a table, it would be nice to use the last entry's "data type" and "Size" as the default for the new entry as oppose to "VarChar" and "10". Lots of times, I group columns that are similar in nature, and makes easier when creating large tables from scratch!

Thanks!

Data Deployment Wizard

Paul Chase — Wed, 14 Mar 2007 14:10:46 GMT

I have a trick mouse and sometimes click past the SQL Server part of the wizard and have to wait until it times out and cannot find server "". Can you add a check for nothing selected in the combo?

Thanks a bunch

Paul

Enhancement Ideas

Ben Kim — Wed, 21 Feb 2007 14:41:29 GMT

Hello all,

When playing with different schemas, for example I have imported an existing database of 540 tables, defined the field descriptions (ok a lot but not all of them!), I wanted to copy the "master" to a copy so I could add items such as Security to test.

I have a couple enhancement ideas for the DDT:

1. Add a Remove Profile option (after done playing with schema, remove DDT Profile)
2. Add a Copy Profile option (copy a master profile to a test profile)
3. Give access to the Messaging, Localization and Security tables (Supply SQL Scripts for 2000 and 2005) so this way if I want to add them to ANY database that might not be in the DDT, I can run a script to create them.

Thanks!

Ben

New Release Question (Infragistics Wrapper)

Michael Reese — Tue, 06 Feb 2007 16:05:46 GMT

Will you be releasing wrappers for the latest Infragistics 06 Volume 3 controls?

Thanks Much

Allow Save without close

Greg McGuffey — Tue, 13 Feb 2007 14:37:15 GMT

It would be nice if you could save modifications to a table structure (and other objects) without closing the form. I recently ran into problems where there was a broken rule that couldn't get fixed and I lost the entire table structure (I was just creating it). If I could have saved as I went, I would have lost one column.

Object Mapper and Custom Field Descriptions

Clayton Hoyt — Sat, 14 Jan 2006 21:10:10 GMT

In the Object Browser, it would be excellent to have the option to set the Description of a field. The only way that I have found to add a customized description to a field property is to modify the Designer.vb directly. This works fine but all of your work is lost the next time the Object mapper is run. I found that I could also add custom code to every field but that is more work and I'm way lazy! :D

It would also be helpful to have a combo-box of common Null Alternatives (String.Empty, Nothing, 0, False) so it doesn't have to be typed in each time unless the value is unusual.

Thanks!

Clay

Constraints and Descriptions

Flavelle Ballem — Mon, 22 Jan 2007 18:13:13 GMT

I have two asks in the Database Deployment Toolkit:

1. I would like to be able to describe constraints in the database, for integrity purposes, which I can't do.

2. If I import a database into the DDT, I would like to have the descriptions retrieved with them. It is really tedious to have to redo the descriptions when there are perfectly adequate descriptions provided.

Concurrency

Guy — Tue, 16 Jan 2007 04:47:41 GMT

Hi,
When using a timestamp field for concurrency checking it would be useful if that field was excluded from the fields that are visualized in the collision notification.

Views

Daniel Essin — Tue, 14 Feb 2006 20:33:19 GMT

How about providing a way to import existing views and stored procedures into the Toolkit (or is this already possible and I just don't know how it works)?

Thanks,
Dan

Infragistics Supprot

Michael Reese — Sun, 08 Oct 2006 09:59:01 GMT

Any updates on support for Infragistics controls?

Import Database

Tim Dol — Wed, 15 Nov 2006 09:36:34 GMT

It would save me a lot of time if I could have the ability to also import a single table at a time. We are in a transition stage where we are not using the toolkit to deploy structures yet but I am building all the relations etc... so I find myself having to manually duplicate all new tables which can lead to many typo's and incorrect setting.

Release Notes Topic

Flavelle Ballem — Fri, 10 Nov 2006 18:21:28 GMT

Just a suggestion - If you added a Release notes topic to the top of the forum, then you could let us know when new versions are released. Quite by accident, I discovered a new version in my Account.

Thanks,

Flavelle

Deal with Deployment Data being empty

Jim Schepflin — Tue, 26 Sep 2006 13:05:57 GMT

Added the tables for Messaging, then set up Deployment Data tasks (In a possibly misguided attempt to distribute the messages that I will be creating).

Fails on deployment, apparently trying to insert into the tables (I don't have data in them yet).

Seems to be more polite to either do nothing rather than try to insert nothing, or to log something such as "No data available to deploy to table XXX" as an info message.

Getting:
An error occurred while creating a stored procedure.
ExecuteNonQuery failed for Database 'MyDatabaseName'
An exception occurred while executing a Transact-SQL statement or batch.
An object or column name is missing or empty. For SELECT INTO statements, verify each column has a name. For other statements, look for em...

Also would be nicer if it indicated which table it's trying to deploy to in the message, I happen to know it's the deployment data since I don't have any stored procedures to deploy yet

Version Number

Flavelle Ballem — Thu, 14 Sep 2006 04:57:38 GMT

When building early release, I would like to be able to specify version 0.1.0 ...

There is a Business Rule that specifies the major version number must be 1 or more. A more workable rule would be that at least one of the numbers must be 1 or more. I suspect I'll have the same request for the Framework itself.

Flavelle

Reporting

Keith Chisarik — Thu, 07 Sep 2006 14:03:12 GMT

Can the DDT in the future include the ability to document the metadata like Stonefield did? That is a feature I miss very much.

How do you guys go about documenting table structures, indexes, and the like. I am using screenshots since I started using .NET, which is obviously lacking in many ways.

Allow "Sharing" of parts of the Database

Jim Schepflin — Fri, 18 Aug 2006 12:39:27 GMT

Our current vision is to have 3 systems, that do slightly different things

Each should be based on some core tables (These are core due to not needing changing between the 3 systems)

Would be nice if I could package the "Core" system along with System1

Would like to be able to Alter/Fix/Adjust the core system in any of the 3 "Specific" systems, then packaging up the "Core" along with one (And only one) of the "Specific" system

So really looking for a way to "Share" the common elements, seems that the Toolkit only will deploy changes made within it. This will require me to go and make the same change 3 times, rather than the "Inherentance" model usable within the business rules.

I could consider creating a seperate DB for "Core" items, but since the Schema / Proc changes are kept outside of SQL server, doesn't seem to allow the sharing there either.

So not sure of best way of doing this (Maybe - Package of packages? Not sure)

As an example, I'm going to create a table w/ an auto-numbering key. Then the reference to the table can be specific to the "Specific" system (System1 calls the key "Customer ID", System2 calls it "Customer", System3 has a 2 part key of "Partner/Facility". All need the same "Core" data, but key structure is slighly different). Plan on having a "Specific" table that provides a relationship between the "Specific" key info and the "Shared" key info.

To add to this fun, each System will have somewhere between 3 and 7 different key possibilities, hope to just need to create a "Link" table per different possibility, and use Business object inherentance to deal with this

So base idea is to have some way of "Sharing" SOME schema between different deployment packages. Ideally would be able to combine multiple "Development" packages into a single "Deployment" package

Allow Specification of Database name during deployment

Jim Schepflin — Fri, 18 Aug 2006 11:33:32 GMT

In the scenarios that we are currently envisioning, we are picturing multiple databases for our application.

Each containing a full version of the Tables / Schema / Etc.

Our plan is to have a Base package, then an Specific part per (Customer / System) that we need to integrate to.

Many times we need to integrate to multiple systems on a single server, all w/ the same stuff, just a different package.

We produce add-on packages, so have basically no control over the systems that we integrate to, so if I need to integrate to a Jim1 system than I'm hoping to be able to indicate that, in a single run, the Database name to create and the ERP package.

So develop a solution, all within one DB, Solution1

Need to install it twice, against Jim1Instance1 and Jim1Instance2

Would hope to have a Jim1Instance1_CustomSolution1 DB AND a Jim1Instance2_CustomSolution1 database possible (Schema within the CustomSolution the same, but business rules pointing to different Instances, and views also specific to the Instance)

Not sure if this is possible currently, if going to add probably could allow this as an option within the ToolKit on the Database Level (Prompt during deployment or something), and if selected ask for each DB with this option selected during the Deployment wizard

Provide history during Deployment

Jim Schepflin — Fri, 18 Aug 2006 11:26:56 GMT

While reviewing the toolkit, find an annoyance that doesn't seem too bad to fix

I'm altering the schema in the Editor, and then deploying it. EVERY time I deploy it, I have to re-enter the Server. Seems like a typical Development scenario, should be easier.

So would like the Database Deployment Wizard to remember the last server per package, at very least. Locally, or in the registry (Don't care which), just to fill this in as the Default.

Then allow changing, so if I do want to put against another server, I can alter it.

Another little annoyance is the lack of sorting in the combo box (All on the Select SQL Server)

SQL Functions

Jim Schepflin — Fri, 18 Aug 2006 08:48:06 GMT

In the scenarios that I'll be deploying, I know always that I will be going against SQL Server, which allows functions

I'd like to be able to include the functions, and get them created in the correct order. I consider it perfectly acceptable for the client to be unable to install against back ends that don't allow the use of functions
Need: Some of the Views use functions (Pure SQL functions, NOT .Net functions (Yet, but that's coming soon too), for speed reasons. The view creation explicitly fails if the function doesn't exist. Next project is quite likely to require function usage. To add to the fun, some functions use other functions, so should probably be dumped into the creation pool with the views (e.g. Create all Tables, Create all Views/Functions, then Create procs. At least this is the modifications I would have to make to our own, custom deployment app, hoping you guys handle it already!)