Call for ideas for DBXTalk UI

Hi guys. Thanks to the ESUG SummerTalk,  DBXTalk team has started to work with the new products of the DBXTalk suite. However, for one of the tools in special we would like to hear your opinion. Just a little introduction to the two other tools:

1) A new Glorp port from VW to Pharo. In addition, we provide the DBX driver for Glorp, by the name of GlorpDBX. Guillermo Polito is mostly working on this.
2) A new tool that uses Magritte and the database metadata to automatically generate the mappings between objects and tables. The idea is to do it two-way:
a) read the metadata from an existing database -> create magritte descriptions -> generate Glorp mappings -> query with Glorp
b) write magritte descriptions for the mappings -> generate database schema -> generate Glorp mappings -> query with Glorp
or something like that....it is not completely decided but that's the idea. This way we can autogenerate the Glorp mappings and then use Glorp normally. Santiago Bragagnolo is working mostly on this.

The third product, and here the question, is going to be a UI for the DBXTalk suite. This UI would do the core functionalities of tools like SQLDeveloper, MySQL Explorer, pgAdmin, etc. This is basically:
- visualize and get information of: tables, views, schemas, relations, indexes, etc.
- be able to modify the previous items and impact them in the database
- write queries and get results

So...why this tool if we can also use external tools like SQLDeveloper, MySQL Explorer, pgAdmin, etc ?  a couple of reasons:
1) having the tool inside the image is easier (just the same way you sometimes install an Eclipse plugin instead of using such programs)
2) the same tool works for all databases
3) we can customize it with particular things of DBX
Gisela Decuzzi is working mostly on this.

Now....what use cases do you think are useful for such UI ? what kind of things would you like ?  what things we can do that are related to Glorp and to the magritte tool?
what things can we do to have even more advantages than just using external programs ?  I have the following things in mind:

- Special console for DBX/Glorp logs.
- Be able to edit Magritte description for mappings.
- Sync the tables and mapping while edditing.
- A new inspector for inspecting restultsets, where you see one rows and columns.

Let us know.

Once again, thanks ESUG for the sponsorship to the team.
  

Mariano
http://marianopeck.wordpress.com

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That sounds great, Mariano.

A few years back I looked at doing something similar to your point 2. I ran into trouble because, at least at that time, there wasn't enough information in the Magritte descriptions, and some of it was of the wrong type. Basically the Magritte information was focused on display and editing. I actually had better luck generating Magritte metadata from Glorp than the reverse. And some things were just different, e.g. the length we want of an edit field isn't the same as the maximum amount of data we can store.

As far as the tool, I think the most important features are the integration ones. You can't beat the standalone tools for pure database operations, but those that help support your features, you can. I don't know that I can make that more concrete, but I think one important thing is features that would help you create, and more importantly, debug, your mappings. When you have something that's letting you express a lot in a very small amount of code, or without code, it's easy to make small mistakes that are then very hard to understand and fix. Things to help with that are important.

On 2011-05-10 6:39 PM, "Mariano Martinez Peck" <[hidden email]> wrote:

Hi guys. Thanks to the ESUG SummerTalk,  DBXTalk team has started to work with the new products of the DBXTalk suite. However, for one of the tools in special we would like to hear your opinion. Just a little introduction to the two other tools:

1) A new Glorp port from VW to Pharo. In addition, we provide the DBX driver for Glorp, by the name of GlorpDBX. Guillermo Polito is mostly working on this.
2) A new tool that uses Magritte and the database metadata to automatically generate the mappings between objects and tables. The idea is to do it two-way:
a) read the metadata from an existing database -> create magritte descriptions -> generate Glorp mappings -> query with Glorp
b) write magritte descriptions for the mappings -> generate database schema -> generate Glorp mappings -> query with Glorp
or something like that....it is not completely decided but that's the idea. This way we can autogenerate the Glorp mappings and then use Glorp normally. Santiago Bragagnolo is working mostly on this.

The third product, and here the question, is going to be a UI for the DBXTalk suite. This UI would do the core functionalities of tools like SQLDeveloper, MySQL Explorer, pgAdmin, etc. This is basically:
- visualize and get information of: tables, views, schemas, relations, indexes, etc.
- be able to modify the previous items and impact them in the database
- write queries and get results

So...why this tool if we can also use external tools like SQLDeveloper, MySQL Explorer, pgAdmin, etc ?  a couple of reasons:
1) having the tool inside the image is easier (just the same way you sometimes install an Eclipse plugin instead of using such programs)
2) the same tool works for all databases
3) we can customize it with particular things of DBX
Gisela Decuzzi is working mostly on this.

Now....what use cases do you think are useful for such UI ? what kind of things would you like ?  what things we can do that are related to Glorp and to the magritte tool?
what things can we do to have even more advantages than just using external programs ?  I have the following things in mind:

- Special console for DBX/Glorp logs.
- Be able to edit Magritte description for mappings.
- Sync the tables and mapping while edditing.
- A new inspector for inspecting restultsets, where you see one rows and columns.

Let us know.

Once again, thanks ESUG for the sponsorship to the team.
  

Mariano
http://marianopeck.wordpress.com

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