Hi Hackers,
For those who don't know, I will develop and ER tool integrated to
pgAdmin during these 3 months as a SoC project. Thanks to Dave Page to
mentor me.
I just set up two environments to develop/test: Slackware 11.0 and
Windows XP SP2. I don't know what version you use to build; 2.6.4 or
2.8.3?
The patches will be in [1]. I'll be using this maillist to discuss all
the development steps.
Project Summary:
Implement an ER diagramming tool fully integrated with pgAdmin. The tool
will have the following features:
1) draw database diagrams: the ability to draw relation with its
attributes, constraints, keys and draw relationships among them. The
idea is to use the wxArt2D library [2] (it's tightenly integrated in
wxWidgets [library used in pgAdmin] and it's actively maintained);
2) get the modifications in the diagram and apply it to schema/database:
map modifications to SQL statements;
3) save the diagram in a proposed format (xml-based): draft a XML DTD
format to store the metadata;
4) use different notation formats for diagrams (Barker's, IDEF1X,
others?): make an abstraction layer to support all of the notation
formats.
Steps:
1) draft a XML DTD to save the diagram metadata;
2) draft the interface integrated in pgAdmin;
3) implement the drawing diagram feature;
4) implement the diagram-to-saving-format feature;
5) implement the metadata to SQL statements feature;
6) implement different notation formats for diagrams.
That's it. I'm drafting the XML DTD (possible an XML Schema) and I'll
post it ASAP, so you could comment about it.
Fell free to contact me if you have any suggestion or doubt.
[1] http://www.timbira.com/soc2007/
[2] http://wxart2d.sourceforge.net/
--
Euler Taveira de Oliveira
http://www.timbira.com/