Re: dia to sql and back

[dialist <pvspam-dialist hacklab net>]

On Tue, 2003-04-01 at 07:22, 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 ;)

Although, just to maximise confusion, I call it an ER Diagram when in
fact it's a UML diagram. So engrained is this that when I first pulled
up the ER shapeset in Dia, I thought someone had made a mistake (and I
didn't think it was me).

> > 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.

Sort of. In Dia-speak it means we need to learn StdProps and rework the
UML shapes from there. And the resultant abomination should of course
not be called "UML" at all, but maybe something like "Database
Diagramming" -- something that implies class-like ER diagrams. This has
been on my to-do list for... months.

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

There was a short but healthy discussion on tedia2sql mailing list:
http://tedia2sql.tigris.org/servlets/SummarizeList?listName=users

----- DIA LIST OFFTOPICNESS BEGINS HERE... -----
> > 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 ?

http://tedia2sql.tigris.org/usingtedia2sql.html -- Search for UML
Components.

> 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.

I've made some changes to Autodia to import "char" value types and to
keep the "(32)" bit afterward. It used to be:

"column    type (111) not null ,"

got turned into

"column    type" but I wanted to keep all the rest of the info for when
it came time to generate a new SQL script.

Is there an Autodia mailing list? Come to think of it, from your
homepage's sparsity (including 404 errors on INSTALL and FAQ etc) we
might merge the projects and host them on tigris.org, since it's got
nice CVS, mailing lists, and project control. I've been very happy with
tigris.org as a host for my project.

-- 
Tim Ellis
Senior Database Architect and author, tedia2sql (http://tedia2sql.tigris.org)
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