Before you begin #
We will guide you in building from scratch a management application based on initially simple functional requirements that we will use as a specification for modeling. Later we will add more complex requirements and show how modeling supports evolutionary maintenance of the application.
The course consists of the following lessons:
- Overview introduces the fundamentals of Livebase: the Cloudlet, the model.
- Example scenario describes the requirements of the system we will implement in the course.
- Creating your first application introduces the modeling of classes and attributes, and the creation and startup of the Cloudlet.
- Extending Your Application introduces modeling of derived attributes, constraints, and custom forms; it also addresses issue management in model maintenance.
- Importing Data from an Excel Sheet introduces importing data into the Cloudlet database.
- Modeling with relationships introduces modeling of association and composition relationships.
- Query and filter model introduces modeling of query attributes and filters on data.
- Defining application views and profiles introduces modeling of multiple Application Schemas and Profile Schemas.
- Manually realigning the database via SQL addresses the issue of manually aligning the database in situations where automatic conflict resolution is not possible.
How to approach the tutorial #
The entire tutorial focuses on the development and evolutionary maintenance of an example management application. Over the course of the tutorial, we will progressively extend the application model to meet an increasingly broad set of requirements.
At the beginning of each lesson we’ll consider a set of requirements and problems in our starting model; then we’ll guide you step-by-step through modifying the model, which we’ll then use to generate and test new versions of the application that are progressively more complex.
The example scenario that will guide us is designed to consider conceptual problems that you may face in modeling real-world systems, and it is sufficiently complex that in modeling its requirements, you will explore all the key aspects of modeling with Livebase.
To get the most out of the tutorial, we recommend that you follow the step-by-step instructions we provide. If you don’t want to do it (or if you find difficulties or discrepancies with what is indicated), at the end of each lesson we will provide a link to download a version of the model with all the changes already made.
Following all the lessons takes about four hours on average, however we suggest you take some time between lessons to review the concepts introduced and try modeling with Livebase on your own. You don’t have to complete all sections at once to get something out of this tutorial, so be patient.
By the end of the last lesson, you will have in your hands a model of a complete management system, which will attest to your experience with Livebase and which you can use as a reference when modeling your next application in the future.
Prerequisites #
Modeling with Livebase requires good skills in analysis and conceptual data modeling (e.g. with the Entity-Relationship formalism). A few years of experience in database design is usually sufficient to acquire the basic skills to start modeling with Livebase efficiently. If you are a software developer with university level education and know the Unified Modeling Language (UML), this will help you a lot, because the diagram structure in a Livebase model is basically a semantically enriched version of the UML Class Diagrams.
Setup #
To follow the tutorial you will need to have a Livebase account and install the Dashboard on your operating system. The application we will generate will be automatically deployed on our cloud infrastructure and will be accessible from a public URL. Therefore, to access the generated application you will need any modern browser (Edge, Chrome, Firefox, Safari, etc.), with JavaScript and cookies enabled.
If you do not already have an account or have not yet installed the Dashboard, expand the following sections.
Registering a Livebase Account
Installing the Dashboard
Is something not working? #
If you’re stuck, Contact our team and we’ll help you as soon as possible.
In the next lesson… #
We will introduce the fundamentals of Livebase: the Cloudlet and the engine: Livebase Overview.