Afternoon,
Being that there's a foot of new snow blocking my way out of the
house, and I just found out I'm going to be a Grandfather via my youngest
daughter for the very first time, I've been spending the day visiting
various web sites and reading up on some of the newer innovations I've not
yet had time to explore.
One of the first things I looked at today was something called
"Lattix LDM" where LDM stands for "Lightweight Dependency Model". It's
basically an alternative to UML and other hierarchical modeling
systems...this one using a Matrix system which the company says is the first
of it's type to be used in the modeling of computer applications.
Now I've only recently started to work with modeling of any
type...and so far ONLY via what is available in BDS2006 Pro and Together.
I've not attempted any two-way designing, and probably won't for quite some
time yet, but the overall value of the system for better understanding class
and unit relationships, as well as being able to document and change these
relationships hasn't escaped me! In particular, being able to sit up in bed
in the middle of the night when a class relationship problem is keeping me
from real sleep and make notes of a little more usefulness than the
balloons, lines, and arrows that I've been using for such things since
design school! Previously my notes of this type, whether made lying down or
in front of the problem on-screen, did include textual notations about the
properties and methods a class might require, however they usually were
referenced from outside my diagrams, and quite often became mixed up with
others along the sidelines which after subsequent additions made the entire
notation unreadable and just as useless. Using my own sub-version of UML,
itself being figured out as I went along, I did manage to clean things up a
bit and my notes now are at least saving beyond the first time I referenced
them. Together, at least when working in front of my computer, adds even
more immediate functionality to notes like this, allowing me to quickly
alter relationships without an eraser, and change the names I give
properties and such as the need arises. And for this reason I was beginning
to consider looking for a modeling tool that I could use stand-alone on my
laptop as well. That way I could still keep it a relatively lightweight
system itself without need to install the Delphi IDE on to it! I'd even
tried a couple freeware contrivances that allow one to quickly mockup
flow-diagrams and the like, but as you can imagine, they aren't quite suited
to the task I wanted to give them.
What I Don't like about UML and other modeling methods I've seen is
that somewhat difficult to use as an overview for a project and in
comparison to a stack of different colored post-it notes laid out on my
desk, I really don't see a clear advantage to either! Even in a project
with only a few forms, by the time you add a couple lines and arrows to the
diagram and add some notes about the inner workings of the classes involved,
you have to zoom way out just to be able to distinguish one from the other!
Then you can't see the project overall anymore!
I guess everyone that uses these kinds of tools has their own way of
dealing with these problems, and I'm not saying their insurmountable, but
when I looked a few examples of even very large projects modeled with this
new tool called "Lattix", the very first thing I noticed was that these
problems simply didn't exist!
I've used mathematical matrixes in the past, and even much more
matrixes that had been setup for use as a way of defining material use and
dependencies while in school for Architecture, but this type I had not ever
seen before. It's main difference when seen in comparison to others is that
it could be described as 'fully realized', by which I mean, it could be
utilized from any direction, up, down, left or right. The dependencies it
describes visually, whether they be in concern to a single class or multiple
units is not only scalable via "+" marks next to each named item, so that
you could easily see just a small portion of the design or the entire layout
with equal ease, but also were immediately understood or better said,
"Grokked", quickly even though I had no prior knowledge of the design being
studied! I believe too that you can open each item up even more fully and
in the IDE add, edit values and other aspects of them just as you would
properties in the Object Inspector. I can't do that in Together even when I
use it on a past design I know well already!
Had it support for Delphi, or at least for object Pascal, they could
have sold me a copy right then and there, unfortunately this is not the
case. Still though I have requested a key for the community version so that
I might be able to see if and how it might still be useful despite it's
two-way abilities or dynamic updating being impossible to use. If you're
interested in learning more about this product, go to http://www.lattix.com/
and check it out. Also, if anyone knows of anything like this, or other
alternatives that can be used in our preferred language, please let me know
as I would be interested in taking a look at it myself.
from Robert Meek dba Tangentals Design CCopyright 2006
"When I examine myself and my methods of thought, I come to the conclusion
that the gift of Fantasy has meant more to me then my talent for absorbing
positive knowledge!"
Albert Einstein
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