This section describes the recent improvements, updates, fixes, and changes made in MetaEd v2.0. 

Updates & Improvements in v2.0

Backward Compatibility with v1.x

Existing MetaEd v1.x projects can be upgraded to v2.x. The steps to upgrade a project are outlined in /wiki/spaces/METAED20/pages/23709882.

Overview

The major improvements from v1.0 include:

• Added New Namespace Reference. This new feature allows reuse of entity names across multiple extension projects. See the Namespace Reference documentation for more details.
• Requires Node 12.5.0 or higher. Node 6.x was end-of-lifed in April 2019.   Node 12.5.0 is the most current version, with long term support until April 2022.
• Removed Implicit Merges. This improvement removes automatic key unification when column names match, which provides greater transparency to data modelers. See the MetaEd Cookbook entry Using Merge Directives for more information about key unification in MetaEd v2.0.
• Added Standardized Plugin Configuration. This new feature for the IDE framework automatically loads configuration files, organizes the data, and notifies plugins. See the Plugin Developer Guide for complete details.
• Changed "With Context" to "Role Name". This language improvement changed With Context to Role Name to better represent the purpose of the keywords. The /wiki/spaces/METAED20/pages/23709882 section in the Getting Started guide has details about how to update old projects to reflect the new language specification.
• Added Open Existing Project Support in the IDE. This improvement adds a new Open Existing Project menu option, which, not surprisingly, opens an existing project in MetaEd.

Change Detail

The following is a detailed list of changes from v1.0:

• METAED-898 — New Namespace Reference
• METAED-854 — Upgrade Node Requirement to 12.x
• METAED-916 — Removed Implicit Merges
• METAED-827 — Standardized Plugin Configuration
• METAED-886 — With Context to Role Name
• METAED-953 — Api Model is Generating DateTime instead of DateTime2
• METAED-972 — Convert CreateDate and LastModifiedDate to DateTime2
• METAED-861 — Have IDE save before build and deploy
• METAED-991 — inline common not caught by validation in 2.x
• METAED-988 — MetaEd 2.0 needs validation that SchoolYear is EdFi.SchoolYear
• METAED-965 — Add an open existing extension project option to IDE
• METAED-1024 — Association domain entity references cannot have merge directives
• METAED-993 — Clarify Tech Suite 2 support for new features added in MetaEd 2.0
• METAED-1026 — Improve error message for projectName
• METAED-997 — If the user duplicates an entity name in multiple namespaces, don't generate bulk extension artifacts