Re: [INTERFACES] Re: [HACKERS] Case tool - Mailing list pgsql-interfaces

On Thu, 17 Jun 1999, Ross J. Reedstrom wrote:

> Date: Thu, 17 Jun 1999 11:14:55 -0500
> From: "Ross J. Reedstrom" <reedstrm@wallace.ece.rice.edu>
> To: pgsql-interfaces@hub.org
> Cc: Kaare Rasmussen <kar@webline.dk>
> Subject: [INTERFACES] Re: [HACKERS] Case tool
> 
> 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.

Yes, documentation is one reason I'm using CASE tool like ERwin, but
reverse/forward engineering is also useful feature. It's very important
if you're doing join project with many developers involved.
I found that it is possible to configure Erwin to work with PostgreSQL
and it really helps me. 

It would be nice to see Vinsent integrated  into pgaccess. But this is
a big project - python,tcl/tk programers require. As I said author of 
Vinsent is looking for somebody continue his project.

> 
> 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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