Getting Primary-/ForeignKey from DataModel objects

[Chris Meyer]

Hi,
I'm developing an AddIn for our company to export EA diagrams to a specific format.
Actually i'm a little stuck on how to conveniently get primaryKey, foreignKey(s) and attributes (such as not null, unique, etc.) in C# from an EA.Element? And further how to get the primaryKey of the referenced table (by a foreignKey) in case i only got an EA.Element, referencing this table (other EA.Element), passed?
In the sample code such cases aren't covered, if i'm not mistaken. Unfortunately I couldn't find any API doc describing object members and routines...

Can anyone give me a hint how to face these issues?
Thanks for your effort in advance.

Regards,
Chris

[Geert Bellekens]

Chris,

What I usually do in such cases is to start with an empty model (eap file).
- Create only those elements (table, PK, FK) that you are interested in.
- Open the eap file with MS Access.
- Look in the tables to see how EA has stored the properties you are interested in.
- Find the attribute in the API that gets filled with the column from the database.

There is a big chance that they will store that kind of data in "magic string" columns such as the PDATA in the form of name/value pairs.

Geert

[Chris Meyer]

Thanks for your reply.
I noticed the following in the attributes:

case	IsStatic	AllowDuplicates
unique, not null	1	1
unique	1	0
not null	0	1
nothing	0	0

Is it possible that the isStatic and AllowDuplicates flags specify not null and unique attributes?

Regards,
 Chris

[Paolo F Cantoni]

Hi Chris,

IIRC that is indeed the case - but it's a few years since I looked at it.

HTH,
Paolo

[Chris Meyer]

Perfect,
thanks for your help guys!