On 2001.05.09 08:53 Bob Gustafson wrote:
> There is a project on sourcefore called Alzabo which will create an SQL
> database from an object representation or will go the opposite direction
> as
> well (reverse engineer an existing SQL database to create an object
> representation.
>
> The object representation can be manipulated via html/browser screens and
> the changes zapped back into the database.
>
> I was thinking of writing a perl script which would create DIA UML
> diagrams
> (the text file) from the internal representations in Alzabo (also written
> in perl). These diagrams could be visualized in DIA, modified (move
> around
> the boxes so result is better formatted), and then reparsed by a script
> to
> be compatible with Alzabo, which would write the changes into the actual
> database (and ignore/retain the visual formatting info)
>
> Perhaps your Dia SQL plugin, or the Dia2SQL can do the same thing?
The plug-in cannot do that right now. All it does is write the SQL DDL for
a UML logical database schema in the syntax described in *The Unified
Modeling Language User Guide*, pp. 110-112, and all it does are the SQL
CREATE TABLE statements (i.e. not all the things the Dia UML diagram is
capable of representing). I don't know about Dia2SQL. I haven't used it
yet.
The next thing for the plug-in is to write the import filter, which to do
it right, involves an SQL parser, which makes it a much bigger job than the
export filter (why, o why didn't I take that compilers class?...)
I'm not opposed to supporting Alzabo per se, but I'd be wary of making the
plug-in solely dependent on it.
> The basic need here is to build up enough tools so that once you have a
> Dia
> UML diagram, something can be done with it besides hanging it up on the
> wall.
Yes, I agree. However, I'm a little nervous about overloading a fast,
lightweight, high quality diagramming program with too many code-generation
features. That is why I opted for the plug-in approach. So data modeling
types like me could use the plug-in if they wished, but others not
interested in databases would not need to have it installed.
Andy
