Re: SVG, autodia and SQL ( was various bits of digest, Vol 1 #801)

[dialist <pvspam-dialist hacklab net>]

On Sun, 2003-03-30 at 09:55, Aaron Trevena wrote:
> Sorry I don't use E-R diagrams, I (and pretty much every programmer I know
> who deals with database schemas) uses a variation of the class diagram.

Yes.

> It is now - I just released version 1.6 which will take either SQL or a
> DBI DSN and slurp out the information.... you can easily add any extra
> types to the list in the Autodia::Handler:SQL module.

GREAT!

> For my next trick I will add dia to SQL support to autodia and
> possibly even dia to DBI which would just magically create your database
> for you. I already read in dia files so this shouldn't be hard

The problem has entered a new domain: the inability of Dia's UML
shapeset to express what DBAs want to express.

The UML shapes don't take into account, eg indexes on tables, so I use
the Class "operations" for that, which is counterintuitive but has a
nearly 1->1 mapping of fields onto what I want for indexes.

It's also not clear how to include say a list of default rows for tables
(a very useful construct which even most commercial products don't seem
to include), so I use... I can't even remember which UML object, to
represent that.

The list goes on and on.

> gone in this direction yet for fear of treading on other peoples toes, but
> it can probably be justified now as more people would find autodia useful
> if it could do everything both ways (i.e. perl to dia to perl and dbi to
> dia to sql, etc)

Ping me when you decide to do this. Might be worth the effort to make
tedia2sql a module of Autodia. I like the idea of merging projects. (Who
knows...? maybe one day Autodia & tedia2sql will be Dia plugins!)

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