ECO for Visual Studio installs seamlessly into Microsoft Visual Studio. It contains the ECO Modeler, the ECO runtime frameworks, and extensive designtime support.

ECO for VS can be installed in all versions of Visual Studio 2005 and 2008, except the express versions.

Supported databases

• Interbase 2007 sp2 and later
• Oracle v8 and later
• MS SqlServer 2000 and later (including Express versions)
• MySQL v4 and later
• Firebird 1.5 and later
• NexusDB v2
• SQLite
• Sybase ASE

MDA really works and it will slash your development time and increase the quality of your output. You can easily earn back any investment you do in a professional Model Driven Architecture (MDA) tool as EnterpriseCoreObjects version 5 (ECO5).

Few things in the software development tool field will bring you such a profound effect as a professional MDA tool like ECO5. Imagine focusing on the model and let the best practice solutions as stated in books like “Patterns of Enterprise Application Architecture” (Martin Fowler) be derived from the model content.

Eric Evans book on DDD (Domain Driven Design) is a classical statement on how to apply MDA technology in practical everyday work. Evans stress the importance and positive effect any project get by adopting an ubiquitous language between domain stakeholders and developers. We fully agree and recognize the predicted boost in productivity from numerous real life cases where ECO5 has been applied.

ECO5 derives database scripts for a multitude of database vendors, including Microsoft SQLServer, Oracle and MySql.

ECO5 derives the c# or VB.NET code to build up the domain layer. Please note that ECO is distinctively different from code generation tools that offer you a stamp tool to get a “one of jump start”. ECO does not abandon you like those tools do; ECO stays and help you whenever you have changed the model. This way the model is always in 100% synchronization with your code. Imagine that! To always have a model that actually matches the current version of your system and database, and that it comes with a negative cost! It makes you work faster.

ECO5 helps you to transform your domain layer to user interface artifacts (UI) by the use of ViewModels. ViewModels are merely your defined transformations from the model layer to the UI layer. Take into account that as much as 90% of a modern administrative system has a predictable UI with TextBoxes, CheckBoxes, Grid components, Buttons and ComboBoxes. This governs for truly hi speed development and change management. Currently ECO5 helps you with predictable UI for Windows Forms, Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) and ASP.NET.

ECO5 has several unique features even amongst the products delivering MDA tools. Some of them are listed here;

1. Derived attributes with automatic lazy update
2. Derived associations with automatic lazy update
3. DB-Schema Evolve (we detect changes and build a change script for the db)
4. Tagged value editors embedded in normal work panes
5. Ability to mark model attributes with HasUserCode to allow you to add extra code set and get operations
6. Versioning ability where you mark classes as versioned and all history is kept in the db (make a temporal database of any db-brand)
7. Full undo and redo stack for the whole domain model (your end users will bring you flowers)
8. State machine definitions act as dynamic, declarative business rule enforcers
9. OCL implementation to allow for declarative constraint definitions
10. OCL to SQL conversion to allow for an object oriented approach to fetch from database
11. OCL query language in memory
12. Linq query in memory
13. Linq query in persistence storage (translation into SQL)
14. Full physical tier separation with persistence mappers (thin, semi-thin, fat; any client goes)
15. Multi client synchronization (having clients notified about cached data being out of date)
16. Built in documentation tool that produce html output

And just in case our message was not clear; we are totally committed to declarative development. We offer practical tools that can put you in the Model Driven Architecture driver’s seat today. We are convinced that declarative development like MDA is the way of the future and we are strengthen by the words of our guru Anders Hjelsberg (Microsoft .net Architect) that he too believes that declarative development is the future.

The people involved in CapableObjects have been on the MDA track since before it was named. We built Business Object Layer for Delphi back in the 90’ths. We where swallowed up by Borland Inc. 2002. Now we are back as free thinkers that make a difference. MDA is what we do and ECO is how we bring that to you.