Changes to the Critics UI

[Thomas O'Brien]

Hi All,

After some discussion with the executives here at SQL Power there has
been a change to the design of the critics UI that we want to make
note of to the community, especially those who have been using the
critics in the recent builds.

The first part about the change is that the critics implementations
that have been committed by the community and the critics that show
the basic error messages in the play pen will remain in the open
source community edition. Additionally, we will still be accepting
almost all critics that the community wishes to contribute. (We
reserve the right to reject a critic due to poor design, not providing
useful criticisms, etc.) The major change in the critics is in how the
user will have them displayed in SQL Power Architect.

Currently the critics in SQL Power Architect appear as badges in the
play pen and can appear in the lower half of the screen below the play
pen. Additionally, the critics will be taking the place of the
existing 'quick fix' feature in forward engineering. The existing
quick fix feature is the window that appears during forward
engineering when you have problems in the play pen like duplicate
table names. The critics will take the place of the quick fix feature
by replacing the quick fix window with the table that appears below
the play pen.

Recently at SQL Power we have been working on an Enterprise Edition of
SQL Power Architect to try and monetize more advanced features of SQL
Power Architect to pay for the development of the open source
community edition. Therefore it was decided that some of the critics
features should be considered part of the set of features in the
Enterprise Edition and a split was agreed upon to keep some of the
critics open while providing more in the Enterprise Edition. First,
both the community edition and Enterprise Edition will have the old
quick fix feature replaced by the new critics window. The critics
window, when forward engineering, will give users of both versions the
ability to see and fix basic errors in the play pen when creating DDL
scripts including the error messages that appear from all of the
critics in the system. The first split between the community and
enterprise editions is the error symbols in the play pen and the error
window below the play pen will now be a feature that is limited to the
Enterprise Edition and will be removed from the community edition. The
second split is in the types of critics between the enterprise and
community editions. We want the community edition to function as an
independent modelling tool so it will contain all of the basic critics
that help correct a data model. The Enterprise Edition will be gaining
some of the extra critics that we decide are not part of the basic set
and may gain additional critic functionality in the future.

If you have any questions about the split in the critics feel free to
post a response. At current we have not laid out what qualities a
critic needs to be considered an enterprise only critic but we have
been told the large majority of community contributed critics will be
accepted and stay in the community edition.

Thomas