The behaviour was that a local view I’d assumed was keeping its value wasn’t and I worked out why very early on, but it still cuased a latent problem.

Stupidly, I’d clicked “Initialise on every entry” on a local view which was wrapped up in a CA Gen batch program.

If I’d had VerifIEr or Model Analyser all those years ago, we could have found that out and fixed it through a proper automated code review.

What’s the evil ? Simply not having enough tools to review and find issues with your code at the time you write it OR not enough testing.

Put simply – tools like Model Analyser and VerifIEr save SOoooooooo much time !

EDGE APAC 2010 is on NOW in Canberra, Australia – hopefully, someone who’s there will let me know how it went and grab some pictures !

Looks like a great Agenda !

The latest is no exception – here, they talk about an alternative mechanism for passing data through many levels of chained action blocks.

The method they describe works, but also has a number of additional bebefits to those they highlight:

• Improving developer efficiency – not only does it reduce the number of changed action blocks (leading to quicker migrations) but reduces the risks of “getting it wrong”.
• In environments where ALL changed action blocks undergo rigorous testing, reducing the number of changed action blocks will also reduce the level of testing required and hence improve efficiency of the testers.

It also defines “Eco-System Services” as “….fundamental life-support services upon which human civilization depends…”.

This is true of the CA Gen Ecosystem (“CAGE”)  since “the CAGE” is fundamental to how CA Gen survives – take a look at the companies in “the CAGE” environment and what they do. Its easy sometimes to overlook these organisations (many of them are linked from the gentalk.biz front page – they provide valuable services for users of CA Gen.

When considering a particular project, or requirement for a function, its sometimes easy to dismiss something as not being available, or hard to do – look inside the CAGE – someone, somewhere must have done it – CrossfIEr is a great example of this – as is ModelCVS.

There are companies out there who have crossed pretty much every bridge in the Gen world and are ready to help you out – look in that CAGE and find them.

This is a giant leap forward for Host Encyclopedia users who have previously not been able to control the generation of (say) .NET code from the mainframe encyclopedia. CrossfIEr is another example of IET listening to its’ customers needs and filling the gaps – I don’t think that there is a single IET product that is a “product for a product’s sake” – ALL of their products, tools and utilities are extremely useful and fill the needs of the users exactly !

Get the lowdown on the product here with the announcement or here for more detailed description

“This illustrates one of the strengths of CA Gen. Because the action diagram ‘source code’ is stored in a SQL database using a precise structure (as opposed to the text files use by almost any other development tool), it supports complex queries that can scan the action diagrams looking for specific coding constructs.”

I’d previously alluded to this here, and the message that is continually coming through from people using CA Gen (or any other MBD environment) is the ease of the impact assessments that can be done. The beauty of the Model is that it is a database that can be searched quickly and easily.

I would challenge anyone out there who uses other non-model-based development technologies to do the same quality of impact assessment with the ease of use and accuracy.

The first feature pack will be available in early 2011. CA are currently recruiting Beta testers. If you are interested in participating in Beta for the first Feature Pack, please drop them an email at dalia(dot)soliman(at)ca.com

Help shape the future of CA Gen by testing the new features in the pack. Being part of the Beta programme is an exciting way to connect with other users of CA Gen, and the development staff themselves. Participate in regular calls with them and learn about how the product is developed and shape the future !

It’s Andy Wyatt covering the future of CA Gen – if you look closely you can see the slide being projected on the board behind Andy – it shows that for r8 there are going to be performance enhancements tp web generation and the ASP .NET components.

Oslo’ng as they are contemplating CA Gen, that’s fine – and knowing the three people in the picture as I do – then CA Gen won’t be far from their mind – it’ll be the ONLY thing on their mind !