Natural ORM Architect, VS2017 and VS2019

Matthew Curland — Tue, 23 Apr 2019 21:07:03 -0000

Although the NORMA project is now tracked at https://github.com/ormsolutions/NORMA I wanted to reach the loyal listeners on this site.

For Visual Studio 2017 and 2019 NORMA is no longer installed with a traditional setup (.msi) file. Instead, the full NORMA product is available in the Visual Studio Marketplace for installation as a Visual Studio extension. To install:
1. Open the extensions dialog inside Visual Studio. In 2017 this is on the Tools/Extensions and Updates menu item. In 2019, the dialog has moved to Extensions/Manage Extensions .
2. On the left of the dialog, click Online (or the sub item Visual Studio Marketplace)
3. In the Search dialog, type NORMA
4. Look for Natural ORM Architect
5. Download and follow the standard directions for installing an extension.

The extension is published by ORM Solutions, and all official NORMA releases will be digitally signed by ORM Solutions, LLC.

Updates for NORMA will also be visible when you reopen the extensions dialog.

The NORMA extension cannot auto-update because it includes XML schema files, which are limited by Visual Studio to require an 'All Users' installation. Auto-update is not available for an 'All Users' extension.

Issues can be reported at https://github.com/ormsolutions/NORMA/issues

Detailed Explanation of Changes
The NORMA project was forced to go through major revisions due to the side-by-side installation approach introduced in Visual Studio 2017 (and later). VS has generally supported side-by-side installation of different VS versions (I have a build machine with VS 2005/2008/2010/2012/2013/2015/2017/2019 all installed and working correctly), there was no way to run multiple instances of the same Visual Studio version (including different editions, like Community and Enterprise) on the same machine. This support caused a number of issues with the way NORMA builds and installs.

From a build perspective, this means that even the location of the Visual Studio installation being targeted is no longer a trivial registry query because the Visual Studio installation information is no longer in the registry! It also means the target destination for the files is no longer static. For example, NORMA files used to install in the GAC (Global Assembly Cache) and be installed under the C:\Program Files (x86)\ORM Solutions directory. With the new system the GAC is no longer used and the files are no longer distributed to a fixed location. This means simple operations like referencing NORMA assemblies now require additional data to build. Beyond the build scripts, some assumptions about file location had to change in code. For example, NORMA extensions previously added verbalization content by modifying the NORMA verbalization directory. However, the location of this directory is no longer available for additional extensions, so NORMA now has to locate and reconcile multiple verbalization directories.

From an installation perspective there are even more changes. To provide full support to the Visual Studio Marketplace we now use a .VSIX file for installation instead of an .MSI. This means that the Setup project is no longer used for builds above VS2015. Setup has been replaced with a different project to reference the same files as setup and distribute them in a VSIX file. Unfortunately, these changes cannot be applied to VS2015 because NORMA installs XML schema files, which cannot be included in an extension prior to the 2017 release.

So, VS2017 was obviously very late (my apologies), but official VS2019 support has arrived right on time. There were a lot of little details required for this release, include non-coding issues like obtaining digital signing certificates to enable official builds in the marketplace.

The bottom line is that NORMA is now available with the latest Visual Studio releases, is visible to the broader Visual Studio community, and is much easier to install, update, and share with your friends. Enjoy!

Natural ORM Architect: 2015-09 CTP Released

Matthew Curland — Thu, 01 Oct 2015 08:02:07 -0000

The September 2015 Community Technology Preview of Natural Object-Role Modeling Architect for Visual Studio is now available through http://www.sourceforge.net/projects/orm or http://www.ormfoundation.org

Expanding the appropriate file download and running Setup.bat will uninstall any old NORMA version and reinstall the new NORMA components. Visual Studio instances should be shutdown before running setup, and Vista/Windows7/Windows8 users should either launch the provided SetupVistaOrLater.bat or explicitly run Setup.bat as an Administrator. The release includes modifications through changeset 1563.

The September 2015 release adds support for Visual Studio 2015.

ORM files can also be viewed online at http://ORMSolutions.com.

Details are available in the included Documentation\Readme.htm installed with NORMA and in the SVN change logs on sourceforge. A copy of the readme has also been posted on sourceforge so you can review changes before you download the binaries.

Natural ORM Architect: 2015-01 CTP Released

Matthew Curland — Sat, 24 Jan 2015 00:01:34 -0000

The January 2015 Community Technology Preview of Natural Object-Role Modeling Architect for Visual Studio is now available through http://www.sourceforge.net/projects/orm or http://www.ormfoundation.org

The January 2015 release is primarily a bug fix release. Support for database import from Oracle has also been added (see the Readme for driver details).

The web browser viewers at http://ORMSolutions.com have also been updated to support the constraint types.

Natural ORM Architect: 2013-12 CTP Released

Matthew Curland — Tue, 31 Dec 2013 04:21:15 -0000

The December 2013 Community Technology Preview of Natural Object-Role Modeling Architect for Visual Studio is now available through http://www.sourceforge.net/projects/orm or http://www.ormfoundation.org

The December 2013 release adds support for the following features, as well as numerous minor features and bug fixes since the May 2013 release.

Visual Studio 2013 support
ORM representations for Value Comparison and Cardinality constraints.
Improve error display management: Enable and disable error display directly from the Error Validation submenu on the NORMA context menu. Error text has also been compacted when displayed in menus.
Verify unique readings across the model.

The web browser viewers at http://ORMSolutions.com have also been updated to support the constraint types.

Natural ORM Architect: 2013-05 CTP Released

Matthew Curland — Wed, 29 May 2013 05:09:40 -0000

The May 2013 Community Technology Preview of Natural Object-Role Modeling Architect for Visual Studio is now available through http://www.sourceforge.net/projects/orm or http://www.ormfoundation.org

The May 2013 release contains fixes for bugs found since the January 2013 release, including fixes for missing internal constraints on the Constraint Validation page in the generated HTML report, some minor changes to the relational view, targeted verbalization enhancements, and a fixes for a couple of crashes.

Natural ORM Architect: 2013-01 CTP Released

Kevin M. Owen — Thu, 17 Jan 2013 06:55:26 -0000

The January 2013 Community Technology Preview of Natural Object-Role Modeling Architect for Visual Studio is now available through http://www.sourceforge.net/projects/orm or http://www.ormfoundation.org

The January 2013 release adds Visual Studio 2012 support, new constraint connections between a subtyping relationship and normal roles, some enhancements to disjunctive mandatory and external uniqueness verbalization patterns, native SQL Server data type handling, and other bug fixes.

Natural ORM Architect: 2012-04 CTP Released

Kevin M. Owen — Fri, 04 May 2012 02:15:54 -0000

The April 2012 Community Technology Preview of Natural Object-Role Modeling Architect for Visual Studio is now available through http://www.sourceforge.net/projects/orm or http://www.ormfoundation.org

Expanding the appropriate file download and running Setup.bat will uninstall any old NORMA version and reinstall the new NORMA components. Visual Studio instances should be shutdown before running setup, and Vista/Windows 7 users should either launch the provided SetupVista.bat or explicitly run Setup.bat as an Administrator. The release includes modifications through changeset 1487.

The April 2012 NORMA release includes improved verbalization for uniqueness and mandatory constraints, additional options for relational column order customization, and several important bug fixes affecting display of unary fact types and objectified fact types displayed as an object type.

The file viewers at http://www.ormsolutions.com have also been updated. The single-diagram viewer (http://ormsolutions.com/tools/orm.aspx) now has context menus to allow cross-diagram navigation. The print viewer (http://ormsolutions.com/tools/ormPrint.aspx) will now load on IE8 (eventually) and renders diagrams incrementally to reduce the wait before anything is visible: the page is fully loaded when the top diagram is rendered. Instructions to enable viewing of your posted files are discussed at http://ormsolutions.com/remoteViewing.aspx.

Natural ORM Architect: 2012-01 CTP Released

Kevin M. Owen — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 07:59:52 -0000

The January 2011 Community Technology Preview of Natural Object-Role Modeling Architect for Visual Studio is now available through http://www.sourceforge.net/projects/orm or http://www.ormfoundation.org

Expanding the appropriate file download and running Setup.bat will uninstall any old NORMA version and reinstall the new NORMA components. Visual Studio instances should be shutdown before running setup, and Vista/Windows 7 users should either launch the provided SetupVista.bat or explicitly run Setup.bat as an Administrator. The release includes modifications through changeset 1482.

The January 2012 NORMA release includes the ability to customize the name and order of generated columns, and to remember these settings when the relational model is regenerated due to a change in the ORM model. Column ordering is consistent across the ORM Model Browser, Relational View, and generated code files. New verbalization options are also available for automatically modifying object type names in the Verbalization Browser. This release also includes a number of bug fixes.

An important featue not included in the download are two online file viewers at http://www.ormsolutions.com. The two file viewers display one diagram at a time, or all diagrams together, with settings to print one diagram per page. This addresses a missing feature in NORMA, namely the ability to print all diagrams in the model. The two viewers can be used to view a local .orm file (browser permitting), or look at files posted on the internet. Instructions to enable viewing of your posted files are discussed on the web site.

Natural ORM Architect: 2011-10 CTP Released

Kevin M. Owen — Sat, 15 Oct 2011 18:13:17 -0000

The October 2011 Community Technology Preview of Natural Object-Role Modeling Architect for Visual Studio is now available through http://www.sourceforge.net/projects/orm or http://www.ormfoundation.org

Expanding the appropriate file download and running Setup.bat will uninstall any old NORMA version and reinstall the new NORMA components. Visual Studio instances should be shutdown before running setup, and Vista/Windows 7 users should either launch the provided SetupVista.bat or explicitly run Setup.bat as an Administrator. The release includes modifications through changeset 1476.

The October 2011 NORMA release includes important fixes for the 'Display As Object Type' and Zoom menu features introduced in June 2011, as well as a fix for code generation issues in VS2010. There are no major new features in this release.

Natural ORM Architect: 2011-06 CTP Released

Kevin M. Owen — Sun, 03 Jul 2011 07:05:33 -0000

The June 2011 Community Technology Preview of Natural Object-Role Modeling Architect for Visual Studio is now available through http://www.sourceforge.net/projects/orm or http://www.ormfoundation.org

Expanding the appropriate file download and running Setup.bat will uninstall any old NORMA version and reinstall the new NORMA components. Visual Studio instances should be shutdown before running setup, and Vista/Windows 7 users should either launch the provided SetupVista.bat or explicitly run Setup.bat as an Administrator. The release includes modifications through changeset 1473.

The June 2011 NORMA release adds new display features (display objectified fact types as object types, display and attach constraints to link fact types), additional ring types with an improved editor for choosing ring types, visible zoom commands, and a long list of bug fixes.

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