Presenting Vanguard – Open Source Code Generation
Posted by on Jun 20th, 2008
2008
Jun 20
A good friend of mine had developed a Code Generator similar to CodeSmith. What is a code generator you ask?
For heavy coders like me, I often have to re-type tons of code that do repetitive inserts, updates, deletes and selects. I wished I was able to just copy paste, replace the tables and fields and voila. Enter code generators.
With the code generators, all you have to do was place a connection string to the database it would read the table schemas and will generate the appropriate SQL CRUD. That alone saves devleopment time
But code generators, are not limited to database access. You can create repetitive code from pre-existing templates. Say you for example you are a web builder, if you create a lot of mini-portals but just replace the headings and some content /links having a template driven code generator ensures that you will be able to deploy a portal much faster and more reliable compared to when you were doing it by hand.
Anyhow, he first looked at Code Smith, but being the cheap bastards he is, he decided to build his own. Joey said he was able to cut down his work time in his previous company by almost half. Imagine that.
He called it Vanguard, not sure why, it sounded cool. It still needs tweaking because at the moment it only runs from MS SQL. But we do intend to make it work at least on Firebird soon and then MySQL afterwards. Plus, we know that the opensource community won’t be receptive if it was just MS SQL hehehe.
When I get the chance I’ll try to take a peek at the code and do some improvements of my own.
For heavy coders like me, I often have to re-type tons of code that do repetitive inserts, updates, deletes and selects. I wished I was able to just copy paste, replace the tables and fields and voila. Enter code generators.
With the code generators, all you have to do was place a connection string to the database it would read the table schemas and will generate the appropriate SQL CRUD. That alone saves devleopment time
But code generators, are not limited to database access. You can create repetitive code from pre-existing templates. Say you for example you are a web builder, if you create a lot of mini-portals but just replace the headings and some content /links having a template driven code generator ensures that you will be able to deploy a portal much faster and more reliable compared to when you were doing it by hand.
Anyhow, he first looked at Code Smith, but being the cheap bastards he is, he decided to build his own. Joey said he was able to cut down his work time in his previous company by almost half. Imagine that.
He called it Vanguard, not sure why, it sounded cool. It still needs tweaking because at the moment it only runs from MS SQL. But we do intend to make it work at least on Firebird soon and then MySQL afterwards. Plus, we know that the opensource community won’t be receptive if it was just MS SQL hehehe.
When I get the chance I’ll try to take a peek at the code and do some improvements of my own.