Thread: The future of pgAdminII .....

The future of pgAdminII .....

From
Tom Jordan
Date:
Dave:

I was just browsing the archives of the pgAdmin-hackers list and thought
I'd chime in with another alternative.

Have you considered Fox:  http://www.fox-toolkit.org
I know you said you have not gotten you head around C++
but there is a binding to ruby http://fxruby.sf.net

Ruby is a cross platform language that you can find here:
http://www.ruby-lang.org
and has a binding to postgresql via it's DBI interface.

Some on the ruby list say it is easy for traditional VB hackers
to learn.

my 2 cents,
-- Tom.





Re: The future of pgAdminII .....

From
"Dave Page"
Date:

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Tom Jordan [mailto:tdjordan@camtronics.com]
> Sent: 28 June 2002 16:36
> To: Dave Page
> Cc: pgadmin-hackers@postgresql.org
> Subject: The future of pgAdminII .....
>
>
> Dave:
>
> I was just browsing the archives of the pgAdmin-hackers list
> and thought I'd chime in with another alternative.
>
> Have you considered Fox:  http://www.fox-toolkit.org
> I know you said you have not gotten you head around C++
> but there is a binding to ruby http://fxruby.sf.net
>
> Ruby is a cross platform language that you can find here:
> http://www.ruby-lang.org and has a binding to postgresql via
> it's DBI interface.
>
> Some on the ruby list say it is easy for traditional VB
> hackers to learn.

Thanks Tom, I'll give it a look.

Regards, Dave.





Re: The future of pgAdminII .....

From
John McCawley
Date:
>
>
>Have you considered Fox:  http://www.fox-toolkit.org
>I know you said you have not gotten you head around C++
>but there is a binding to ruby http://fxruby.sf.net
>
Well, my .02 is this...

It would be extremely difficult (if not impossible) to implement the
Access migration functionality of PGAdminII off of the Windows platform.
 I am not too well versed in other areas of the tool, but I would
venture a guess that a lot of the functionality is highly tied to ADO
and other interfaces that don't necessarily have a competitive workalike
outside of the ADO/Jet/VB/etc world.

Secondly, and it pains me to say this, I am completely disgusted with
the state of C/C++ development on Unix.  I've been writing in C for over
seven years, and have ported two large C++ applications from Windows to
Linux.  In all of this time I have never even remotely warmed up to GNU
make, autotools etc., nor any of the toolkits such as GTK and the like.
 It's not that GTK is a bad API, it is certainly better than Win32, but
the myriad Linux systems just makes development a mess.  The 1998
Windows binaries of my 3D engine still run on Win95, 98, and 2000.  I
can't even get the source to compile under Linux any more. (Let alone
run the binaries)  The source hasn't changed, but the system has.

When I first used PGAdminII I was disappointed that it was using a
non-free development environment.  But after some thinking, I honestly
can't think of anything worth porting it to.  It isn't just a question
of learning C++.  It's simply that the current state of cross platform
C++ toolkits is miserable.  I've honestly never heard of Fox, so I can't
judge it, but my experiences with GTK, QT, WxWindows, et. al. have
taught me that they are rarely the panacea they claim to be.  If a
person is having trouble with C++ in the first place, the world of cross
platform C++ toolkits is a tough thing indeed.





Re: The future of pgAdminII .....

From
"Dave Page"
Date:

> -----Original Message-----
> From: John McCawley [mailto:jmccawley@worleyco.com]
> Sent: 28 June 2002 20:13
> To: pgadmin-hackers@postgresql.org
> Subject: Re: [pgadmin-hackers] The future of pgAdminII .....
>
>
> >
> >
> >Have you considered Fox:  http://www.fox-toolkit.org
> >I know you said you have not gotten you head around C++
> >but there is a binding to ruby http://fxruby.sf.net
> >
> Well, my .02 is this...
>
> It would be extremely difficult (if not impossible) to implement the
> Access migration functionality of PGAdminII off of the
> Windows platform.
>  I am not too well versed in other areas of the tool, but I would
> venture a guess that a lot of the functionality is highly tied to ADO
> and other interfaces that don't necessarily have a
> competitive workalike
> outside of the ADO/Jet/VB/etc world.

This is very true. I am finding however, that I don't have the time (or
interest) to spend on the peripheral tools and plugins for pgAdmin (for
example, the Migration Wizard is a ported version of the code in the
GPL'd pgAdmin I). When I rewrite pgAdmin in whatever language it will
be:

1) Cross platform
2) Able to manage and design *all* PostgreSQL objects
3) Able to connect to multiple servers simultaneously
4) Bloody good :-)

I will not be spending time writing plugins that people won't use. For
example, how many people use the Msysconf wizard, or the publishing
wizard?

Probably the most useful of these tools is the Migration Wizard (well,
at least until your app is ported) and the import wizard, which are both
*very* high maintenance bits of code which due to their very nature
cause more support issues than anything else.

They are also both tools for which there are alternatives. Access can
copy tables using the upsizing wizard, or by saving them to an ODBC
datasource, SQL Server has it's Data Transform Services (Data Pump).
Other DBMS's can easily export their schemas and data in relatively
standard formats. Flat ASCII datafiles as handled by the Import Wizard
can be modified using Perl, Excel or Gnumeric and saved in formats
suitable for psql's COPY command.

Hopefully you see where I'm coming from...

> but my experiences with GTK, QT, WxWindows, et. al. have
> taught me that they are rarely the panacea they claim to be.

For a while I was convinced that C# was the way forward for pgAdmin, and
to that end I am very involved in the Npgsql project to build a .Net
data provider for PostgreSQL. I am less convinced now as it seems that
the Windows.Forms classes will not exist in Mono for some time. This is
why I then started looking at other technologies. From much research,
wxWindows seems to be the best choice (I'm not saying it will be easy
mind) with C++. There is a fair amount of documentation detailing the
gotchas and considerations when writing cross platform code.

> If a
> person is having trouble with C++ in the first place, the
> world of cross
> platform C++ toolkits is a tough thing indeed.

:-) I will get my head around C++ - I just haven't given it any serious
time yet.

Regards, Dave.




Re: The future of pgAdminII .....

From
"Jordan, Tom"
Date:
>---------------------------------------------
>From: John McCawley <jmccawley@worleyco.com>
>To: pgadmin-hackers@postgresql.org
>Subject: Re: The future of pgAdminII .....
>Date: Fri, 28 Jun 2002 12:13:02 -0700
>>
>>Have you considered Fox:  http://www.fox-toolkit.org
>>I know you said you have not gotten you head around C++
>>but there is a binding to ruby http://fxruby.sf.net
>>
<snip>
>
>It would be extremely difficult (if not impossible) to implement the
>Access migration functionality of PGAdminII off of the Windows platform.
> I am not too well versed in other areas of the tool, but I would
>venture a guess that a lot of the functionality is highly tied to ADO
>and other interfaces that don't necessarily have a competitive workalike
>outside of the ADO/Jet/VB/etc world.

Granted I am not familiar with the Access migration functionality,
but if you mean the Database Migration Plugin, it would be easily
implemented using the DBI interface.  The side benifit would
be that it would not be limited to just MSSQL and Jet databases, but
would open it up to other source databases.

>Secondly, and it pains me to say this, I am completely disgusted with
>the state of C/C++ development on Unix.

Me too.

>I've been writing in C for over
>seven years, and have ported two large C++ applications from Windows to
>Linux.  In all of this time I have never even remotely warmed up to GNU
>make, autotools etc., nor any of the toolkits such as GTK and the like.

There ok, but the fox toolkit and ruby comes with VC6 project files.
The side benifit would come from the same look and fell on linux and win32.

>It's simply that the current state of cross platform
>C++ toolkits is miserable.  I've honestly never heard of Fox, so I can't
>judge it, but my experiences with GTK, QT, WxWindows, et. al. have
>taught me that they are rarely the panacea they claim to be.

I agree, but Fox does seem to me to do a good job of it.
YMMV

Anyway, I thought I would suggest it, but it's your choice.

Take care,
-- Tom.



Database Designer

From
John McCawley
Date:
Is there anything similar to Microsoft Enterprise manager's Database
Diagram Editor available for Postgres?  I really like implementing
relationships etc. graphically, and it's nice to have a printable
datamodel.  Even though I'm developing on Postgres right now, I'm
designing my tables and relationships in the MS Diagram editor, and then
running the PGAdmin migration wizard to pump my tables to Postgres.  If
no such tool is available for Postgres, I'm considering writing it as a
plugin for PGAdmin.

Any thoughts?

John