In the webinar, Demystifying Macros with ER/Studio, Embarcadero Software Consultant Stanley Chan demonstrated how macros work in ER/Studio. He showed how to use the built-in macros and also shared some custom macros during the session. If you missed the live presentation, you can watch it on demand. There were a lot of great questions during the session, some of which Stan didn’t have time to answer live. So he has provided responses to several of those for this blog. Q: In the color-coding de...

In my last post, I suggested that the conventional “facet” approach to designing master data models (in which each master domain is modeled, designed, and implemented in isolation from the others in the enterprise) creates gaps in the ability to effectively build applications that facilitate successful execution of end-to-end business processes. For example, the perception (and consequently the definition) of the role of a “customer” changes between the marketing, sales, finance, fulfillment, an...

Sometimes you need to face the inevitable: the tool selected years ago is not the one you need for the future. Have you been struggling with complicated modeling tasks or outdated tools? Are your data models getting too big to handle? We’ve heard from a lot of customers recently who have been frustrated with their old data modeling tools, for multiple reasons such as: Lack of functionality Lack of support Lack of a future roadmap Embarcadero is committed to enabling our users to adapt to...

Over the years, I've had a number of occasions to need to store information about when somebody worked on a certain job. Sometimes people will want to store the date the work was done and the number of hours the employee worked, where as other people will need to store the start time and the stop time (in other words, when the employee "punched in," and when the employee "punched out"). Often, the same customer will need to use both methods of recording time, depending upon the nature of the wor...