Unused selects in SHTOLO

[Günter Staub]

Rob,

some time ago I proposed this behaviour, but there was some objections
against it (but I do not remember when and from whom).
I do not have a real problem to provide a switch for allowing to prune
unused types, but in this case the possibility should be mentioned (as a
note?) somewhere in the Annex of the EXPRESS LRM (either as a last step in
the longform generation or during the EXPRESS:1994 transformation).

Question: what about other unused types, unused functions, constants, etc.
which do not result from the long form generation? We need a very clear
answer here also.


Rgds,
Gunter

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-----Original Message-----
From: Rob Bodington [mailto:rob.bodington at eurostep.com] 
Sent: Monday, October 13, 2003 9:53 AM
To: expressIF at tc184-sc4.org; wg11 at steptools.com
Subject: Unused selects in SHTOLO

Hi

Most extensible selects in the modules are used for the following
template.

You have a base extensible select that is referenced by a single
attribute in some relationship entity. This select is then extended with
entities in the relationship whenever the module is reused. These
extended selects are not really used other than to create a population
for the base select. i.e. there are no attributes with the select as the
corresponding types.

For example.

TYPE approval_item = EXTENSIBLE GENERIC_ENTITY SELECT;
END_TYPE; 

ENTITY Approval;
  status : Approval_status;
  purpose : STRING;
  planned_date : OPTIONAL date_or_date_time_select;
  actual_date : OPTIONAL date_or_date_time_select;
END_ENTITY;

The approval_item is then extended in a number of modules. E.g.

TYPE ap239_mri_approval_item = EXTENSIBLE GENERIC_ENTITY SELECT BASED_ON
approval_item WITH 
   (Contract_assignment, 
    Event, 
    Event_assignment, 
    Identification_assignment, 
    Project, 
    Project_assignment);
END_TYPE;

ap239_mri_approval_item is not really used anywhere - it simply there to
provide a population of approval_item.

The consequence of this is that a resulting long form has a number of
selects that are not really used at all - they are a side affect of the
process of populating the base select.

Consequently I was thinking that it would be a good idea if the tools
provide the option to the e2 to e1 SHTOLO to prune any extended select
that is not used by any attribute or other select.

What does everyone think?

Regards
Rob

-------------------------------------------
Rob Bodington
Eurostep Limited
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