Those diagrams were generated automatically from Fileman (ultimately using the SQLI library) using a tool known as ERwin. Other approaches are possible, too. for example, many tools support reverse engineering of ODBC data sources. But I think you will find that, at some point, you're going to need to sit down and revise your data models by hand. The diagrams are useful, but there's more work to do. It is my opinion that a direct mapping from the Fileman DDs to UML would give you a better starting point for modelling VistA, but that's not unproblematic. The essential problem is that VistA developers have traditionally relied on code to define (and enforce) the constraints of their model, thus making it difficult to build a completely automated tool to analyze and document the model.
Several years ago, I went through the process of doing a lot of this work, essentially by hand (using Cameron's ERDs as a starting point, incidentally. Lest I give the wrong impression: I am very much impressed by those diagrams.) There was a lot of work that could be automated, and I think parser driven analysis tools have a lot of promise. But it is still difficult, if not impossible, to avoid going through the manual process. === Gregory Woodhouse <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> "If you give someone Fortran, he has Fortran. If you give someone Lisp, he has any language he pleases." --Guy L. Steele, Jr. ------------------------------------------------------- This SF.net email is sponsored by: Splunk Inc. Do you grep through log files for problems? Stop! Download the new AJAX search engine that makes searching your log files as easy as surfing the web. DOWNLOAD SPLUNK! http://ads.osdn.com/?ad_id=7637&alloc_id=16865&op=click _______________________________________________ Hardhats-members mailing list [email protected] https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/hardhats-members
