Code Generation

[RickLaird]

I testing the code generation mechanism in EA and have a question.

When I make a change to an operation's signature why does EA not update the operation I have changed?  What I see is that EA generates a new operation in the source code instead of updating the one I have changed.  And if I delete an operation in the model and then go through code generation why is the deletion of the operation in reflected in the code?  It means I have to go and manually clean out the code.  If I do not clean out the code and do a Synchronize Model the old operation is now back in the model.

Can someone help me better understand the process of Code generation in EA.

Thanks
Rick Laird

[sargasso]

Rick,

Think of it this way - EA is primarily a modelling tool not a code generator.  

Because of its great support for reverse engineering it treats the code as the truth and will only update it if you force it to do so - by setting the "overwrite existing source" flag in the forward engineering options.

Of course this means that any procedural code in the source file will be clobbered.  

Bruce

[Barry_Pearce]

This is an interesting point.

Personally I only advocate forwards engineering and therefore the model is the truth - the code is merely the model + embellishments (known in the trade as code-that does-stuff).

Maybe we need a option to change the view point

[Christiaan]

There are a lot of feature requests regarding code generation (inlcluding mine;) and hopefully sparx will implement them. Thinking EA is primarily a modeling tool and not a code generator does not solve much of your problems as a software engineer. If you want to be a productive modelliing tool in the software development process, code synchronization is a must.

regards,
Christiaan