Thread: Cooperation

Hi,

My name is Robert Mitwicki I am student of University of Science and
Technology in Cracow (POLAND). I would like to help You....

I want to make some kind of plugin/functionality to pgAdmin - I try
explain what I try to make....

I want to do views of database like in MS ACCESS (user friendly views
of database) user can click on object, move tables, make relations,
edit table, delete, and so on ....

This is kind of user friendly GUI, this is for help users get an eyeful
databese in normal view not only in rows and columns or some
treeviews. It can be graphic representation of database.

I want to ask You, is there something like this what I want to do ?
and if not, maybe there is posibility to make this functionality ?
What do You think about this project ?
Maybe some advice ...

Thx for answer
Regards.

--
Robert Mitwicki
Kontakt:
    jid: mitfik@jabber.org
    e-mail: mitfik@gmail.com
------------------------------------------

www.partiapiratow.org.pl

Hi Robert, at least for me, your idea is fine, but let me clarify something, in your proposal the user is able to see a graphic representation of database (including tables, views, relationships, etc) with reverse engineering, and then user can modified this representation and the scripts that do this task are generated.

I can tell you that a good start point can be the  graphical query builder of pgAdmin (partially finished but the next week I restart their development), is possible to adapt this part of pgAdmin to accomplish this task and I can help you if you like.

You can try here the september version (oh I have been a little lazy :( I must finish this soon):
http://code.google.com/p/google-summer-of-code-2008-postgres/downloads/list


The next question will be for the community, asking what do they think about this addon for pgAdmin?

But In fact for me, this addon can be useful for a future entity relationship modeler, if we use the two step generation of database (logic or conceptual data model that in turn is mapped to a physical model during physical design ). This addon can be transform later in the physical designer part of the modeler. Or we can start thinking in the ER modeler and start the design of this tool with that idea in our goal.

Regards, Luis Ochoa.

Hi Robert,

On Wed, Oct 29, 2008 at 3:29 PM, Robert Mitwicki <mitfik@gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> My name is Robert Mitwicki I am student of University of Science and
> Technology in Cracow (POLAND). I would like to help you....
>
> I want to make some kind of plugin/functionality to pgAdmin - I try
> explain what I try to make....
>
> I want to do views of database like in MS ACCESS (user friendly views
> of database) user can click on object, move tables, make relations,
> edit table, delete, and so on ....
>
> This is kind of user friendly GUI, this is for help user get an eyeful
> databese in normal view not only in rows and columns or some
> treeviews. It can be graphic representation of database.
>
> I want to ask You, there is now something like this what I want to do ?
> If not, maybe there is posibility to make this functionality ?

It sounds like you're proposing to implement the ER diagramming
functionality that has been on our todo list for some time. It would
be able to reverse engineer a schema and present a view of it showing
tables and relations etc, that the user can manipulate as required.
changes to the schema that are made can then be applied to the
database in a batch task.

This obviously provides the user friendly GUI that I think you are
proposing, and with the addition of the ability to save diagram layout
and print etc. the ER diagramming that we want already. I really don't
think a feature such as this is a candidate for a 'plugin' though -
that would be more for simple tools and addons than a major feature.

I'd be happy for you to work on something like this, but I wouldn't
want you to underestimate the size of the task, which I would estimate
to be the most complex single feature in pgAdmin. If I were working on
this, I'd want to set aside probably 4 - 6 months to work full time at
a rough estimate. If you're not familiar with the existing pgAdmin
code or wxWidgets, then there is an additional (steep) learning curve
to factor in.

--
Dave Page
EnterpriseDB UK:   http://www.enterprisedb.com

> If I were working on this, I'd want to set aside
> probably 4 - 6 months to work full time at a rough estimate.
> If you're not familiar with the existing pgAdmin code or
> wxWidgets, then there is an additional (steep) learning curve
> to factor in.

That is very much true. I have also started to contribute to pgadmin. It
takes some time to get familiar with the codebase assuming you have prior
knowledge of wxWidgets. A project like the ER diagramming tool in pgadmin is
not a small task to accomplish. Off the top of my head I can give you two
things you have to know for this.

- A good grasp of C++ and wxWidgets in general, including 2D drawing and
painting in wxWidgets . You could look at the GQD in version 1.9-dev
- Understand how relations work in PG (look at pg_depend table)

Regards,
Gevik.