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Raveen Ryan Sundram
10-Mar-2005, 05:16 PM
Wil,

Great idea!! Better alias file support has been 'swept under the
carpet'...I think.
I hope these suggestions would be made available soon - especially a GUI
interface to create alias files.

And also, better support of alias in the IDE. Currently, if you've declared
an alias file but fail to use the DD in a view - the saverecord/update
routine HANGS. The IDE should be able to load/use/insert necessary alias
file into a view/program too.

Or Dataflex should have better locking logic for alias/master files.

Raveen


"Wil van Antwerpen" <info@antwise.com> wrote in message
news:C2F8E58C1F7D4A4CB525AC96D503B58E0E7D70@bunyip .abacus-labs.com...
> With alias files as being "the way" to solve specific relational problems
> within VDF i have always wondered about why they are so badly supperted
> from within VDF. I'll explain what i mean with 'badly supported' as they
> do their jobs wonderfully once you're there.
> Our development tools otoh offer no help at all in this respect, instead
> it feels as if they work against this mechanism.
>
> Problem 1) Changes to the masterfile are not automatically copied over to
> the alias file.
>
> If you change the file structure of the masterfile by means of
> adding/removing a field then you must never forget to output the .FD file
> for the alias file again.
> Why is this? Can't the Database builder update all of the aliases file
> declarations for me automatically?
> Yes it can and it should always do that imho.
> The .FD files of master and alias files should ALWAYS be the same, heck we
> are talking about the same physical file!
>
> Problem 2)
> Most of the logic that your master datadictionary has, has to be
> replicated to the alias datadictionary files, yet we are not offered to
> subclass datadictionary files so that we can re-use code.
> The databasebuilder is only capable of understanding ONE datadictionary
> class in your entire project. (Well, 2 actually as you can always still
> use the normal DD class)
>
> No we _have_ to synchronize those master and alias datadictionary files by
> hand, COPYING code from one file to another, not really object oriented is
> it?
>
> Idea)
> Why do we still need to add the "Set_Attribute DF_FILE_ALIAS" lines in the
> database builder?
> This is another thing that could relatively easily be made automatic.
> The file with rootname=DF name should be MASTER and all the other ones are
> aliases. Okay not foolproof maybe, but it would be a nice start.
> Alternatively, one could skip that detection and just have a GUI interface
> for creating those lines.