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ID Category Severity Reproducibility Date Submitted Last Update
0002057 [Database Workbench] Diagramming feature have not tried 2010-04-07 17:14 2010-05-03 15:18
Reporter daltoncalford View Status public  
Assigned To
Priority normal Resolution open  
Status feedback   Product Version
Summary 0002057: White Board/Scratch Designer
Description Very often when specifying a database design, you are not sure of what you are doing until well into the design process.
With most E/R tools, you are required to fill out detailed information that you may not have yet decided upon.

For example, you may decide you need a surrogate key, but have not decided to use auto-incrementing numbers, generated UUIDs or even what domain/datatype will hold that generated value.

If you had the ability to enter a list of strings (each representing a column within the table design), then come back later in the design process to assign datatypes, you make the design process flow easier.

The biggest problem with large project design, is loosing the design due to the details (loosing the forest for the trees). To have the diagrammer's entity box have one more tab that is more free-form, would make the diagramming tool a very powerful development group design feature.
Additional Information
Tags No tags attached.
DBMS and Version Any
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-  Notes
(0000843)
martijntonies (administrator)
2010-05-03 14:18

 Dalton,

When creating a conceptual diagram, the Entity Editor has a Notes box on the first tab and you can freely add attributes without datatypes.

Is this what you mean?
(0000844)
daltoncalford (reporter)
2010-05-03 15:18

 Not really,

From the standpoint of a design session, you may know you need some form of entity to hold a specific type of data.
You may even know some of the basic columns you will need in that entity, but that may change.

So, from a designers standpoint, you need to be able to drop an entity onto the diagram, give it a description, perhaps give it a name, and have a (Delphi Coder Hat coming on) Tstringlist that you populate with the idea of one column per line. No data/domain type, no description. No other tabs on the entity.

The whole diagram has a button on it called "realize" (or something like that) and it's first job would be to go through all the entities and put together a list of unique names, which in turn becomes the domain list.

Once the domain list is produced, a process goes through all the entities, and changes the scratch column list to a real column list with domains. The current system works from there.

This would allow for white board design of the underlying data structures without worrying about assigning/deciding upon datatypes until the overall structure is complete.

Just remember, the name, notes and column list are all different elements in the design process and any one of them may change at any time. Keeping them separate until a physical model is required is a very powerful tool.

It would also be interesting if you had certain types of entities that never would be realized in metadata - ie, diagram objects that represent Servers, Databases, Schema, Client Applications, Middle Tier objects etc. All of these things impact and must be designed for in the database, and there are no tools that currently aid the developer to do this.

Right now, I am using Agilian (http://www.visual-paradigm.com/product/ag/) [^] Sql Maestro and Morfik to coordinate my dev./design team.

We develope it in Agilian, redo all the work into SQL Maestro, and then code the front end with Morfik. It would be nice to replace Agilian and Sql Maestro with a single package that is customized for database design/firebird.

- Issue History
Date Modified Username Field Change
2010-04-07 17:14 daltoncalford New Issue
2010-04-07 17:14 daltoncalford DBMS and Version => Any
2010-04-07 18:55 martijntonies Status new => acknowledged
2010-05-03 14:18 martijntonies Note Added: 0000843
2010-05-03 14:18 martijntonies Status acknowledged => feedback
2010-05-03 15:18 daltoncalford Note Added: 0000844

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