Forum OpenACS Q&A: Re: Tutorial and Testing

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2: Re: Tutorial and Testing (response to 1)
Posted by Nagita Karunaratne on
Hello James,

Everyone learns using their own methods but this is how I started (probably not the best):

  1. created a ER diagram of the core datamodel.
  2. created a ER diagram of each of the core modules, then went through the plsql code to to see how each module interacts with the overall and to learn the transactions on the datamodel.
  3. walk through the tcl code for the modules to see how the adp/tcl pages process the 'user experience'.
  4. try to model the page flow (although the best I have come up is the interaction flow diagrams used in some old Arsdigita documentation).
Suggestions:
  1. read the Internet Application Workbook. It has some of the reasoning for the datamodel structure.
  2. reading the documentation, forum postings, searching Google.
Keep in mind that most people take months of concentrated effort to become productive.
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5: Re: Tutorial and Testing (response to 2)
Posted by Roberto Mello on
I don't think there's a need to study the entire core datamodel in detail unless you plan to modify or extend it.

If you just want to develop new packages, having the ER model of core and packages is helpful, but how much of it one will need to study it depends on what your package does.

As for (3), studying the templating system docs plus some examples from other packages is enough to get you started.

-Roberto