On Fri, Dec 14, 2012 at 10:17 AM, Edson Richter
<edsonrichter@hotmail.com> wrote:
> Em 14/12/2012 12:21, Merlin Moncure escreveu:
>
>> On Thu, Dec 13, 2012 at 5:52 PM, Edson Richter <edsonrichter@hotmail.com>
>> wrote:
>>>
>>> Em 13/12/2012 20:10, Merlin Moncure escreveu:
>>>
>>>> On Thu, Dec 13, 2012 at 1:54 PM, Edson Richter
>>>> <edsonrichter@hotmail.com>
>>>> wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>> Has anyone created a XML Schema that would represent PostgreSQL
>>>>> database
>>>>> with all (or at least, major) structures?
>>>>
>>>> no -- furthermore, why would you want to? what would be the consumer
>>>> of this 'schema'?
>>>>
>>>> merlin
>>>>
>>>>
>>> I was wondering to create a tool for diagramming and database forward
>>> engineering.
>>>
>>> There are already few tools around.
>>>
>>> If you know a good diagramming tool able to database diff and forward
>>> engineering (with "ALTER ...", not "DROP and CREATE"), I would like to
>>> know
>>> (by today I do use one commercial tool that is feature incomplete:
>>> DbWrench).
>>>
>>> Among others, I've considered also:
>>> - Sybase PowerDesigner: too expensive, does not support PostgreSQL
>>> 9.1/9.2,
>>> so is not appropriate.
>>> - ERWin: too expensive, and doesn't have proper support for PostgreSQL
>>> 9.1/9.2.
>>> - NaviCat: is feature extensive, but they don't have real change scripts
>>> (are drop/create).
>>> - ModelRight: it's "change script" is not change at all (is just another
>>> drop/create tool).
>>> - TORA and other open source tools are really incomplete.
>>> - TOAD is too confuse for simple day-by-day work.
>>>
>>> Most of these tools or doesn't support PostgreSQL features (are too
>>> generic), or doesn't do real forward engineer (are only able to
>>> drop/create
>>> objects, not alter them), or cannot deal with partial diagrams (I can't
>>> deal
>>> with only one diagram with hundred of tables at once).
>>
>> Years ago I decided that the only way to do forward engineering was to
>> capture the changes I make to development databases in scripts and to
>> manually apply those scripts for release management. This process
>> works and like you I've found the various commercial tools to have
>> various weaknesses. So for forward engineering I say: quit using
>> tools and write scripts.
>
>
> Yes, I've developed special tasks to update database automatically based on
> schema version. But this becomes a hard work very quick (because system
> grows too fast and we don't have dedicated DBA to deal with all those
> changes).
>
>
>>
>> I'm also like you amazed how poor the various database diagramming
>> tools are -- they all suck. Case Studio used to be pretty good back
>> in the day but I wouldn't recommend it today. My personal take on
>> ERD/diagramming is that:
>>
>> *) diagram generation should be automatic and useful
hrm, I just found schemaspy. It looks pretty nice.
merlin
