Question regarding "Pos" attribute on t_attributes, and duplicate values

[ejafman]

Hi all,

I am automating some things in order for our modeling group to easily check standards, etc., as well as generating metadata for our downstream consumers.

I have noticed in my travels in the object API, and SQL statements into the model metadata, that there are duplicate values for a given class, in regards to the "Pos" attribute.

I have an inkling as to how they got in there, but was curious whether this issue will cause other issues for us in the future, so that I can plan accordingly for a cleanup exercise.

Funny, but in the UI, there doesn't seem to be any place to specify the Position of an attribute on the class; the clean up would have to involve some form of export and reimport with the values cleaned.

I guess the bottom line question I have is whether this issue will cause future issues, other than downstream consumers wondering how/why the exported values are duplicated?

Thanks in advance...

Eric

[Geert Bellekens]

You can manipulate the position of an attribute by pressing Ctrl+arrow up/down in the features window.

Geert

[ejafman]

Thanks Geert,

It seems as if when I did that control arrow, I was prompet with a message saying that there was a custom ordering, so I removed it. I then tried again, and it prompted me to change the default ordering to something other than the default alphabetical sorting.

After doing that, it seems as if the Pos values were not changed at all, and ordering by pos <> ordering by name, for the class I changed.

Go figure...believe me, Sparx EA isn't the only software that has these quirks. At my last place, which was using Powerdesigner, we actually had to add a bunch of user defined attributes, in order to allow the automation scripting to not mangle certain things that a physical database needs to know about.

I will take this back to the group, and we'll act accordingly.

Thanks again...Eric