Week 15 of 2009

I have spent most of this week reworking and finishing various bits of OOA Tool code associated with Attributes and Data Types. This rework was and still is a diversion from finishing the Action Language overview. Once I have finished this stuff, I will finish off the overview and then try to wrap up a new build. When I talk about finishing the overview here, I also include finishing the Action Language syntax along with a parser to test the syntax. Unfortunately, the next build won't be ready before the end of April.

I mentioned mathematically dependent referential attributes last week and I have now started to use them in the Information Model and Data Dictionary subsystems, e.g. Attribute.Data Type, Attribute.Initial Value and Data Item.Data Type. I also discussed in Week 10 of 2009, letting analysts use object instance types with simple and mathematically dependent attributes as long as they enable a project level option to do so. However, I no longer think there are any good reasons for allowing analysts to use object instance types with attributes now that mathematically dependent referential attributes are supported. If anyone can think of a good scenario where an object instance typed attribute is needed then let me know. I should point out that there are a number of different ways that object instance values may already be stored within model population attribute values:

• as a mathematically dependent referential attribute value,
• as an external typed attribute value which encapsulates an object instance value passed from another domain,
• and as an event instance typed attribute value which encapsulates an object instance self reference and/or one or more object instance value arguments.