dia to sql and back

[Aaron Trevena <autodia droogs org>]

Tim Ellis :
> 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.

that sounds like a concensus ;)

> > 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.

indeed, but I'm not sure want I want, something very similar to the UML
Class would be nice, but with extra database bits for things like
constraints, and less non-db fields - fields for uniqueness would be good.

A short re-working of the UML class would be fine.

> 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.

Yes, I already use methods in the UML Class shape for indexes and primary
keys. Looks like more concensus.

> 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.

that sounds interesting - care to give a more verbose explaination ?

> 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!)

umm.. probably the next release, I'll download tedia and have poke about
in it. I like the idea of merging the projects, I have already sucked
GraphViz::DBI and one of the sql2dia perl scripts into the project, both
were totally refactored to fit into autodia.

Do any of the other dba's here have any views on how to use class shapes
to represent tables in dia?

regards,

A.

-- 
Aaron J Trevena - Perl Hacker, Kung Fu Geek, Internet Consultant
AutoDia --- Automatic UML and HTML Specifications from Perl, C++
and Any Datasource with a Handler.     http://droogs.org/autodia