Designer/2000 stiffles full software life-cycle ?

We are using Designer/2000 1.2 on a relatively big development project and I don't feel we are getting back the benefits of investing some heavy time and effort in Designer/2000 !!

I am hoping the problems mentioned here were also felt by the user comunity at large and that you can help us find a way to solve Designer/2000's shortcomings...

First, when you generate the first database model from the Entity/relationship model information, all the fields in tables that make up foreign and primary keys come with the strangest names, obviously composed from all the foreign key hierarchy, names like MAIN_SUB_SUB_SUB_SUB_CODE are very common in relations two or three levels deep.

Now, of course these names are un-usable. So since the tool allows us to rename those fields we got down and rename all the fields to usable names. We did a small test first and regenerated our 2 or 3 tables and Designer retained the collumn<->attribute mapping, so we felt confidant we could rename the table columns at will.

The main problem is after the first cut system design, after you generate a couple of Screen Modules and you start noticing you forgot a few attributes in this or that entity. So what do you do ? Naturally we go the beginning and create those missing attributes in the entity model, and regenerate the tables. And here the problems start to appear...

Somehow Designer ignored all previously mapped columns and created all new primary and foreign keys with all those strange names one more time and, retained the previously renamed columns. This is one major major pain we felt with the tool, anyone knows how to sidestep this "feature" ?

The next BIG trouble was in reflecting the changes in the database model to the test database! The only way found was to drop the modified tables with the cascading option, and run the scripts Designer generated for all the related tables. This is extremely annoying and time-consuming with great potential for dangerous mistakes.

Anyone found a better way to reflect changes in Designer to the actual database ? This was a major stumble for our project , we lost a whole week in the process..

Hoping to hear from all the experienced Designer users out there

Many thanks in advance !

..Shafik.Mahomad.......................................................
.......................................................................
..Information Systems Consulting......................Lisbon, Portugal.
......smahomad_at_telepac.pt.....................The Thrill of Discovery..
Received on Fri May 17 1996 - 00:00:00 CEST