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Getting Started Tutorial

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Laurent Hasson edited this page Nov 30, 2019 · 5 revisions
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In this tutorial, we'll follow the steps needed for you to get started with Tilda, and in particular, get set up for the tutorials available such as First Tutorial Part 1: Benefits Of A Transparent Iterative Model-Driven Approach and Second Tutorial Part 1: Compile-time Java Code Generation.

This material is also available as a PowerPoint presentation or a PDF document and should take anywhere between 30mn and 60mn depending on your environment and your level of experience with the tools we recommend. We'll cover the following:

  • Set up your development environment with Java, Eclipse, Tomcat and Postgres
  • Create the baseline projects
  • Hook up Tilda's command line utilities

Prerequisites

We have used Tilda with very Junior teams. In general, it's better if:

  • You are somewhat familiar with Java development and a Java IDE, even if coding Java is optional.
  • You have some passing experience/familiarity with JSON
  • You have some passing experience/familiarity with SQL

Goals

  • Tilda rests on human-readable and editable JSON-based model definitions that can be edited in any JSON-capable editor and are processed via a variety of command-line utilities:
    • Gen: validate the model(s), generate ORM code artifacts and searchable/navigatable HTML documentation
    • Docs: Outputs HTML and SQL documentation to the file system from the model(s)
  • The ‘T’ in Tilda stands for “Transparent”, and all artifacts are generated in human-readable form, fully commented and documented
    • Although Tilda allows to model complex data, the framework is architected from the ground up so that all artifacts generated are clear and clean so that the connection between an element in a Tilda definition file and its impact on the runtime or database is easy to see
    • Generated code relies heavily on the Java compiler to actualize in code many patterns, so that complex migrations (moving tables, changing indices, adding/removing columns etc…) has a direct compile-time impact that can then be easily remedied with standard code editors and refactoring methodologies.
  • The ‘I’ in Tilda stands for “Iterative”, and all processes and utilities when working with the framework encourage a fluid team-based iterative approach from design to deployment.
    • Migrate: migrates a database to the model(s)

The Tutorial

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