tangible T4 Editor and tangible architect - what is what and how do they fit together?

We certainly get this question a lot.

Short answer is: These are different products with a different price point on our price list. However they share a few components such as the modeling tools and that's the reason why they can be used together efficiently.

Here is the long answer: tangible architect is a complete Software Factory. This means it consists of the same modeling tools that come with T4 Editor but also brings it's own code generation (templates) capabilities to generate Business Objects, SQL-Server Schema and a schema management component that can upgrade schemas with a changed model. It also has a Drag and Drop UI-Designer. Besides it can do reverse engineering from code. The only functional limitation is that you cannot change the existing code generators we have. However you can add additional code to the partial classes being generated by using T4 Editor. As tangible architect maintains model, code and database schema in sync automatically it is a good match for Rapid Prototyping and mid-sized projects.

tangible T4 Editor plus modeling tools is the foundation you can build your own Software Factory with or add additional code generation to a tangible architect project. Note that the code generation logic we ship with tangible architect as well as the UI-Designer and Schema-Management are not part of tangible T4 Editor plus modeling tools. You would need to write our own templates or reuse templates from the online gallery to generate business objects, db schema and write your own schema management component and eventually reverse-engineering capabilities if you want the same level of functionality for your architecture that tangible architect provides.

The T4 Editor is used when you need a different target architecture than tangible architect provides. E.g. if you want to use LINQ-to-SQL or Entity Framework you would need to use T4 Editor plus Modeling tools as tangible architect is based on SQL-Server-Meta-Data-Services as ORM, only.

Here is a 1 hour video on how our customers use tangible architect during the envisioning phase of a project for rapid prototyping and later on switch to tangible T4 Editor plus modeling tools to target a different architecture.

 

Video: Team-Play - tangible architect and T4 Editor in large Projects

If you are interested to trial Tangible Architect VS2008 please contact us via the contact form. We have a version ready for you.