The “Selected Tables Only” checkbox

We have implemented a long standing request that provides you with more control over how your hierarchical object model is created. Now you can limit your hierarchical object model to include only those tables that you have selected at code generation time. When EntitySpaces creates your hierarchical object model it does so using your foreign keys in your database to determine the relationships. Let’s take a look at how this new “Selected Tables Only” checkbox logic works.

Notice above that we have checked the “Selected Tables Only” checkbox and that we have only two tables selected (the “Employees” and the “Orders” table). When EntitySpaces generates the code it will generate the Employees and Orders classes as usual. However, since we have checked the “Selected Tables Only” checkbox only the hierarchical properties involving the Orders and Employees table will be added as hierarchical properties. Let’s take a look at the Employees class (below) generated with the above settings and see what it looks like.

Notice the Employees class contains only the self referencing ReportsTo properties and the OrdersCollectionByEmployeeID property. This is because only these two tables were selected and of course we checked the “Selected Tables Only” checkbox.

The Orders class above contains only the Employee hierarchical property for the same reason.

Without the “Selected Tables Only” checkbox

Finally, let’s regenerate with the “Selected Tables Only” un-checkbox and show you what the difference would be. When you leave the “Selected Tables Only” checkbox un-checked the hierarchical object model will include all of the related objects regardless of what tables you have selected (this is currently how it works).

The Orders table hierarchical properties would be as follows.

This feature is already implemented and will be included in our next release and is one of the items requested in our Q3 Wish list forum. This can come in real handy when your database contains many tables and you only want a subset of them in your hierarchical object model. This can also be very useful in DotNetNuke development if you wanted to include the users and roles tables only for instance and not have to include all of the other tables they reference (due to the hierarchical properties). We are working through the Q3 Wish list and implementing the requests quite rapidly.

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