Matthieu MEZIL : EDM Designer

EDM Designer: one more new feature

Matthieu MEZIL — Sun, 12 Apr 2009 13:52:00 GMT

I just added a new feature in my EDM Designer: when an entity type isn't mapped or is only partially mapped (so we aren't able to use our edmx), I reduce its opacity:

I do the same for Model Browser:

I also do the same for associations:

EDM Designer: new feature

Matthieu MEZIL — Sat, 11 Apr 2009 23:56:00 GMT

I added a new feature in my EDM Designer: the ability to see with context menu in which views the selected type (entity type or complex type) is present and the ability to navigate to this view.

Or directly from the Model Browser

EDM Designer: new version

Matthieu MEZIL — Tue, 07 Apr 2009 21:22:00 GMT

I just published my EDM Designer.

After a lot of talks about it, particularly at the MVP summit, I changed my tasks priorities. With this new version, my EDM Designer doesn't manage SSDL functions (including Stored Procedure) and is not integrated in VS. For this version, I added two features :

designer entities location saving
Abilty to see different views of the same edmx, which simplifies the big edmx management. Note that an entity type can appear in multiple views.

EDM Designer V0.9

Matthieu MEZIL — Mon, 09 Feb 2009 23:37:00 GMT

My first EDM Designer version was a viewer. It's now a real designer.

You can realize all the EDM mapping scenarii without writing xml yourself! ... except for Functions mapping (with Stored Procedures).

I am very happy to see the interest of some of you on this project and I am sorry to be so slow but, you have to understand that I work on it only at night and moreover, I have a wife and two children, so I haven't got as much time as I want to do it.

Remember that it's my first WPF project. So the code is probably not perfect. Moreover, my tests are near to zero so there are probably some bugs. If you find one, please send me an email at "matthieu.mezil at winwise.fr". If you have some WPF advices, you can also send me an email.

In the next version, I will try to integrate it in VS.

EDM Designer

Matthieu MEZIL — Wed, 07 Jan 2009 09:36:00 GMT

I didn’t blog for a (too) long time which is strange for me.

I received some emails asking if I was ok and I found in this a similitude between Scott Guthrie and myself. Lol

So what did I do during my nights this last month? No I don’t sleep more and no I wasn’t in a 6 weeks’ vacation.

In fact, I'm beginning a very funny project: doing an EDM designer! And I thought that it was time I did my first WPF project.

If you look at the code, you will see a VB project. Yes Julie, you read well. This project is used to write an edmx file from my classes and, instead of using serialization, I choose to play with VB9 XML Literal. For all other projects, I use C# of course.

The first version is only a CSDL read-only designer.

I think it makes two interesting points compared to the current MS designer:

The ability to show only some entity types and not all
The ability to show Complex Type

What do I want to add in the following versions?

The ability to add or remove csdl type / property / relation / inheritance (fixing these bugs of course) and to save it into an edmx file
The ability to change csdl type / property properties like the name, the visibility, etc.
The ability to show and change the mapping (including TPC which isn’t supported by current MS designer)
The ability to (re)generate csdl entity types from ssdl entity types. (In current MS designer, it generates it when you add the table / view from the wizard but if you delete your csdl entity type, you have to regenerate it yourself or to delete your ssdl entity type and to use the wizard to add it again. Moreover, for SSDL View, you have nothing to generate the CSDL entity type)
The ability to add SSDL Views or Functions
Integrate it in VS
The ability to save your designer

You can download it here.

As I said previously, I am a WPF beginner so if you have time to audit it and if you have some remarks, advices, criticism, post a comment please.