Re: File Formats (was SVG)

[dialist <pvspam-dialist hacklab net>]

On Sat, 2003-03-29 at 17:13, Alan Horkan wrote:
> > > > p.s. Autodia 1.5 pre-release 2 is now available, with added Dia
> > > > (now both as input and output), VCG, GraphViz, SQL and DBI handling as
> > > > well as a bunch of fixes.
> > >
> > > Okay. I have a question, which I know can be answered simply by looking
> > > at the Autodia homepage, but would like to ask here in this forum.
> >
> > here is where i stop reading.
> but seriously if you know the answer is simple, then you are looking
> for trouble by asking on the list and being so bold as to say you could
> not be bothered to even try and find the answer yourself.

I shall explain myself, then.

When I search for information in mailing list archives, it's good to get
a full answer to what you're looking for.

As a DBA, it would be very nice to know if I want to do a standard DBA
task (get a schema from a database into Dia and export it to another)
what tools are required.

It seems as though it's like this:

1. You must get the schema into SQL using some tool (unknown).
2. You must use Autodia to convert that to a Dia diagram: this
   is where we begin caring--there are thorny issues like
   formatting. Dia's placement/collision algorithms seem
   suboptimal.
3. You must use tedia2sql to convert that to SQL again, for the
   target database.

The reason I want to ask this here is that Dia is the destination of
generalising database schemas, and it is the source of generating new
ones, supposing you use Linux as your operating system of choice.

So Dia is the mecca, thus the appropriate mailing list for all this.

I'd like that internet searches for how to do this turn up this mailing
list (if not J.K. Lowden's page) and kind of glues all that together,
and I don't think I'm the most expert person for summarising how Autodia
works. I suspect that Aaron Trevena is that expert (a pretty good
suspicion, if you know a whole lot about Autodia).

-- 
Tim Ellis
Senior Database Architect and author, tedia2sql (http://tedia2sql.tigris.org)
If this helped you, http://svcs.affero.net/rm.php?r=philovivero