Re: [HACKERS] Case tool - Mailing list pgsql-interfaces
From | Ross J. Reedstrom |
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Subject | Re: [HACKERS] Case tool |
Date | |
Msg-id | 19990617111455.D13622@wallace.ece.rice.edu Whole thread Raw |
Responses |
Re: [INTERFACES] Re: [HACKERS] Case tool
(Oleg Bartunov <oleg@sai.msu.su>)
|
List | pgsql-interfaces |
On Thu, Jun 17, 1999 at 09:29:07AM +0200, Kaare Rasmussen wrote: > Someone posted this link to a Case tool: > http://www.ccas.ru/~gurov/ftp/Editors/CASE/Vinsent/ > > Unfortunately it's in Russian, which I know nothing about, and it > doesn't seem to have been worked upon since 1997. > > I don't know the strength of this tool, as I can't understand the > description, but can this be the best OSS-contender with no work being > done for two years? I've spent time looking for such tools in the Free Software community on and off over the last couple of years. I agree that there's a gap in what's available. Sometimes, I think the problem is that, although there's a number of academic projects working on the general problem of graph layout, they all seem to want to commercialize their code, rather than contribute it to the community. A consequence, I think, of how expensive good commercial CASE tools are: makes it easier to imagine turning your pet project into some money, I suppose. Perhaps a deeper reason seems to be the suspicion among hacker types that CASE isn't all it's cracked up to be. Heck, there's no OSS graphical IDE for software development, but that hasn't stopped the development of some pretty large projects (the Linux kernel and PostgreSQL as two examples.) A public CVS repository, text editor of your choice, and command line compilation tools (e.g. gcc driven by make) seem to be all the developers need to get the work done. CASE diagraming tools seem to be more critical for generating pretty pictures for management. That's been true for me, so I added simple schema diagramming to the pgaccess tool. This allows me to document the relationships in an existing DB, rather than the other way around. (Hmm, that reminds me, did I send that last version off to Constantin? I better check) I will admit that the diagramming has also eased collaborating with co-developers at remote sites. So, I see it as filling part of the documentation problem, rather than the design problem. Now, it seems that your experience has been that DB CASE is critical for large DB projects. Perhaps these types of projects scale differently the code development projects I mentioned above. If so, the free software community hasn't had the chance to fill that niche yet: heck, it's only been the last 12 to 18 months that PostgreSQL has matured enough in the eyes of many to tackle really big DB implementations. I haven't had the opportunity to use commercial CASE tools (or commercial DB,s for that matter!) What benefits do you see in using them? It seems you're incredulous that anyone could maintain a DB with more than 60 tables without them. Why? It seems to me that maintainability of any complex system comes from a well factored underlying design, rather than from complex maintenance tools. I'd really like to hear your take on this, but I'm pretty sure the HACKERS mailing list is the wrong one for this discussion. Ah, I think the INTERFACES list looks about right. (I've posted there, and CCed you on this mail, since I'm not sure your subscribed there) Ross -- Ross J. Reedstrom, Ph.D., <reedstrm@rice.edu> NSBRI Research Scientist/Programmer Computer and Information Technology Institute Rice University, 6100 S. Main St., Houston, TX 77005
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