Hi Les,
Ahh. I remember it well, hours poised over flowcharts ironing out bugs
without a computer in sight! Still, you were using a pencil, so you
can't be that old. I used a variant of flowcharting called the "Bowers
Notation" after a former colleague Richard J Bowers who devised it. In
fact I still use it today. It uses the same idea but is more compact as
it does not use the traditional symbols. But I digress.
I definitely like the idea of a "tunnel" for complex transforms, not
that mine are generally that complex, but they do tend to increase in
complexity as ones understanding of FME increases. With that and the
flowchart analogy idea that Les is muting it seems to me that we are
already quite close with "Custom" transforms. The inputs and outputs
would need to be able to be decoupled from the main data flow though the
workbench so that they could "drop off" or be "picked up" at other
places within the workbench. I have used custom transforms quite a few
times to simplify the layout of more complex transforms.
Regards
Richard Wilkinson
Systems Analyst
Resources - ICT Services
Leicestershire County Council
0116 3057709 **New Number**
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
-----Original Message-----
From: [email protected] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf
Of Leslie Last
Sent: 05 July 2007 09:15
To: [email protected]
Subject: RE: [fme] A wish for the next version of Workbench. The
TUNNEL.
I've been following the responses to this suggestion with great
interest.
I'm going to show my age now ... Anyone else remember
flowcharts?
When I started programming, the first stage was to draw a
flowchart (on paper, using a template for the standard shapes). And we
used a pencil, not a quill pen, before anyone asks! Computer time was
so expensive that programmers attempted to get the logic right on the
flowchart before writing any code. Processes were described within a
rectangle shape; decisions used a diamond with 2 outputs (one for True
and one for False. The processing flow was shown by joining the shapes
with lines and arrows. There's a reasonable description on Wikipedia at
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flowchart
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flowchart> for anyone not familiar with
the concepts. At Manchester University, we developed a language called
Flocoder used to describe flowcharts and automatically generate the
resulting program.
There were two major problems with large flowcharts - avoiding
too many crossing lines and the paper being too small to fit the entire
flowchart on - sound familiar?
The solution was to use something called a connector -
represented as a circle containing a label, usually a letter or number &
letter. These came in pairs, one on an output link and a matching one
on an input link. The convention was that connections on the same page
used a letter as the label; a number & letter would indicate that the
matching connector was on a different page, with the number being the
page number;
I suggest the same concept could be used in Workbench. A line
connection could be selected & a right-click option of 'Convert to
connectors' would replace it with an output connector from the source
transformer and an input connector to the destination. The connector
labels could be the name of the relevant transformer; circles wouldn't
be feasible, but something like a lozenge with an arrow at the left for
destination and the right for source could work. Right-click options on
a connector would include 'Convert to line' and 'Follow connection' to
change the focus so the matching connector is at one side of the view
(left for destination, right for source).
What do others think?
Regards
Les
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Leslie Last
Chief Technology Officer, Development Team, Dotted Eyes Ltd
Direct phone +44 (0)1527 556920 (ext.248)
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