Thread: Updatable views: any decent front-ends?

(As this seems to be the general pg list, I'm posting here even though
it is a front-end issue.  Apologies.)

While I can happily create rules on views to allow inserts, updates
and deletes, I can't find a GUI front-end that understands that the
view allows record edits that I can run on linux (whether through X
or web-based doesn't matter) and simply open the relation and edit
data without designing horrible forms with lots of code.

I note that MS-Access allows this, as it asks for the field(s) that
are unique and can be used for updating when you "attach" a table,
but I don't have (or want) a Windows box or MS-Office.

So....
1) Does anybody know of a tool that allows easy editing of data in  views?
2) Might it be useful to have a "contrib" module that has additional  table that stores such information in a way the
toolssuch as  pgadmin, phpPgAdmin, OpenOffice etc could leverage?   This would  possibly be in a new well-known schema,
maybe"accessory_catalog"  and be a bit like the optional schema used by pgadmin.
 
3) Has anybody hacked common front-ends (such as phpPgAdmin) to do  something like this.

If I have to develop a hack (probably to phpPgAdmin), I will, but I'd
be taking approach (2) as part of the solution, and would offer it to
"contrib" so other pg-related tools could use it.  The other thing I'd
put into it would be an association between relation, attributes and
short strings suitable for default screen prompts and report headings.

I am being wrong-headed here?
-- 
David T. Bath
dave.bath@unix.net

Bath, David wrote on 24.11.2005 23:57:
> While I can happily create rules on views to allow inserts, updates
> and deletes, I can't find a GUI front-end that understands that the
> view allows record edits that I can run on linux (whether through X
> or web-based doesn't matter) and simply open the relation and edit
> data without designing horrible forms with lots of code.
> 
> I note that MS-Access allows this, as it asks for the field(s) that
> are unique and can be used for updating when you "attach" a table,
> but I don't have (or want) a Windows box or MS-Office.
> 
> So....
> 1) Does anybody know of a tool that allows easy editing of data in
>    views?

You might want to try my SQL Workbench:

http://www.sql-workbench.net

It will not auto-detect the key columns for updating the view, but it 
will allow you to select them manually if needed (for update/delete). 
Maybe I'll add automatic detection of the keys in the near future (if I 
find the time)

It is written in Java (Swing) and thus should (and does) work on Linux.

Whether it qualifies as "decent" is up to you :)


Thomas