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Visual Studio and Repository Schemas


It is great that we now have language sensitivity in VS when editing repository schemas.

One thing that is a real pain when editing schemas with multiple structures is not being able to tell which structure you are in when you search for things and land on a field.  It would also be helpful to be able to search within a particular structure - say you search for "refund" or "deposit" or "date" fir example, and it finds a match, hwo do you know if its found it in the structure you are interested in?

I know this is not an issue if we have separate schemas per structure, but many systems only have one large schema with all structures i it.

I have resorted to copying a structure  out into notepad to examine it, and even then its not always obvious you only have the structure you are interested in if that structure is 500+ lines of code

4 Comments | Posted by Gordon Ireland to Visual Studio Integration, Repository on 2/24/2025, 12:36 PM
Marty Lewis
One of the things we have in-progress is enhancing Repository and rpsutl to generate individual source files for all of your structures, files, templates, etc., to help make the transition to having individual schema files much easier. We're also enhancing the tools to make this experience work better between your Visual Studio projects and the Repository UI, so that we can automatically regenerate the changed structures and keep your sources up-to-date.

Maybe not a perfect fit, but would having the tools help manage the individual files for structures be a potential solution for you?

2/27/2025, 10:38 PM   0  
Gordon Ireland
Hi Marty. That would be great where i was responsible for making decisions like that.  But as a freelancer I have to go with what I find, and that's when it's a real pain.

Biggest problem is doing a search for a field and not knowing what structure it's in

2/27/2025, 11:13 PM   0  
Kish Baley
Gordon,

Two suggestions that might help in the meantime:
Search for the structure name first, then the field name
Use Notepad++ instead of Notepad, there is a Find All option and in the results pane you can click on each one and the cursor moves to that line in the edit pane. While not addressing your specific ask, it does allow you to navigate around the schema much quicker.

Marty,

Not sure if this is in future consideraton, but would be be possible to generate a schema as Json in addition to the standard text? If Json, then there are all sorts of tools available for viewing/editing. Being able to load a Json schema would be the counterpart.

2/28/2025, 1:33 PM   0  
Gordon Ireland
Thanks Kish.

I would do that if i know the structure and just want to find the field.  But sometimes I would be looking for say "tax" or "transport" or whatever, and it finds a hit in the field name or comment, but the structure name might be 500+ lines of code above where I am, and if I scroll up I might miss a structure.  Ideally being able to collapse and expand structures as you could if it was in JSON would be a big help, or if VS could show the structure name at the top of the screen, similar to  what it does if you were searching a class and it shows the method name the current line of code is in.

2/28/2025, 1:54 PM   0  
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