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Conclusion Usage Overview

Introduction

Decide's Conclusion is a tool that is used to generate code blocks based on data structures and data objects. Generated code blocks such as stored procedures, can also optionally be executed against a target database. Generated code can be in any language that Conclusion "templates" support - currently T-SQL, PLSQL, C#, and Visual Basic.

N-Tiered Development

The physical layers of a well designed enterprise application are made up of various code elements. Stored procedures are created by creation scripts, data centric middle-ware is comprised of .Net code, as is the presentation layer. Conclusion uses an iterative approach for mass producing these code blocks that are the basis for applications.

Once a business and its associated needs for a project have been defined and its data tables have been created, Conclusion can analyze those tables and generate stored procedures that will allow other entities to access the data. Although Conclusion is open-ended in the types of access it will support, typically stored procedures are developed for CRUD access (Create, Read, Update, Delete). Once generated, these procedure creation scripts can be automatically run to install the stored procedures. Once the stored procedures are in place, Conclusion can analyze them and generate code that creates the data-centric middle-ware components in VB or C#.

From a data layer component or from any other type of .Net Assembly Conclusion can generate any other type of code block. These new code blocks can be other middle-ware components or user interface components such as Windows forms or web pages. Conclusion also has the added feature of generating data layer components by creating web service proxy classes.

Templated Approach

Code blocks are generated by "merging" the signatures of procedure/method calls and their returned data with a Conclusion "template". Conclusion templates, initially developed by Decide, are text files that configure how the results of code generation should look. One template is created for each type of code block to be generated. For example on is created for the Edit screen, another for the Search screen and so on...

Central to the templated approach is the "method types" within Conclusion data layers. "Method types" correspond closely with stored proc CRUD operations in that each "type" denotes a data operation - a Select, Update, Get... Each type of code block that Conclusion can create (an therefore each template) has various needs in terms of data operations. For example and Edit screen needs to "Get" one record of data and "Update" one record therefore the Edit screen template can be used to generate an edit screen from any data layer component that offers methods of both the Get and Update method types.

Figure 1: Conclusion Overview

Overview

  1. Conclusion analyzes data tables. The user selects what procedures need to be generated based on these tables and thier creation scripts are generated.
  2. Generated stored procedures are installed on the target database.
  3. Conclusion analyzes stored procedures, merges methods and returned method data for those method types needed by the selected data layer templates, and then Conclusion generates the associated data layer code.
  4. The data layer code files are written to one of Conclusion's results folders.
  5. Conclusion can analyze existing middle-ware components and generate code for new middle-ware components.
  6. The new middle-ware code files are written to one of Conclusion's results folders.
  7. Conclusion can analyze web services and create proxy classes and save the code as a new data layer component.
  8. Conclusion can analyze middle-ware components and generate code for user interface elements.
  9. The new user interface code files are written to one of Conclusion's results folders.

Not all of the above steps are required. Some Conclusion users need all application elements to be generated where as other users have complete data layers already built before Conclusion enters the picture. Only those steps whose output is needed need to be run.

Summary

Conclusion can be used to improve consistency, maintainability, security and any of the other principles of good application design by generating elements using the templated approach. Check out the main navigation links to read more about generating each of the application elements.

Conclusion Ver 1.4 - WGU 3/10/2005