panSL language reference. Table of contents.

SubName

It is often necessary to specify different names for a PropertyType.

Two conventions are supported in panSL:

A) SingularName / PluralName
The example below uses "Person" / "Persons" and "Organisation" / "Organisations"

B) UIName | ModelName | ERDiagramRole | UserfriendlyName / IdentificatorName
The example below shows different aspects of an Employment-relationship.

Example:



Person / Persons

   First_name 

   Last_name 

   Employer | Is_employed_by | Employment / Person_org   RelationOne 

Organisation / Organisations

   Name 

   Employees | Employs | Employment / Person_org         RelationMany

Not every SubName needs to be specified. If a particular SubName within the PropertyName is not given
the name of its closest "right-hand neighbour" is used instead. As a minimum the IdentificatorName must be specified.
In other words, a SubName propagate from right to left until a new SubName is specified.

If for instance ER-modelling is not desired or important, the example above could have been written as:



Person / Persons

   First_name 

   Last_name 

   Employer | Person_org       RelationOne 

Organisation / Organisations

   Name 

   Employees | Person_org      RelationMany

Field name	Description
ERDiagramRole	Describes what role the entity has in the relation. Example (see the top of this section for the whole schema-text): Employer \| Is_employed_by \| Employment / Person_org
IdentificatorName	This name must be unique for every PropertyType / Relation. IdentificatorName is what binds two entities together in a Relation. [UserfriendlyName] / IdentificatorName, must be identical at both places where the relation occurs in the schema. Example (see the top of this section for the whole schema-text): Employer \| Is_employed_by \| Employment / Person_org
ModelName	The preferred name when referring to "the other side" of the relation in an object-oriented model. Example (see the top of this section for the whole schema-text): Employer \| Is_employed_by \| Employment / Person_org This name does usually coincide with UIName.
PluralName	The plural of an entity-name. Example (see the top of this section for the whole schema-text): Person / Persons
SingularName	The singular of an entity-name. Example (see the top of this section for the whole schema-text): Person / Persons
UIName	The preferred name for use in the actual user-interface. Example (see the top of this section for the whole schema-text): This_persons_employer \| Employer \| Is_employed_by \| Employment / Person_org This name does usually coincide with ModelName. The example above is a bit contrived. If would be more naturally to just reuse the ModelName, like: Employer \| Is_employed_by \| Employment / Person_org
UserfriendlyName	This is the name used inside of the diamonds in ER-diagrams, that is, it specifies the type of relationsship. [UserfriendlyName] / IdentificatorName, must be identical at both places where the relation occurs in the schema. Example (see the top of this section for the whole schema-text): Employer \| Is_employed_by \| Employment / Person_org Note how the UserfriendlyName is separated from the IdentificatorName by a slash, not a vertical bar.

panSL language reference. Table of contents.

More samples available at http://panSL.org/samples/.

Last updated 2012-05-02