[SqueakDBX] Call for ideas for DBXTalk UI

[Mariano Martinez Peck]

Hi guys. Thanks to the ESUG SummerTalk,  DBXTalk team has started to work
with the new products of the DBXTalk suite. However, for one of the tools in
special we would like to hear your opinion. Just a little introduction to
the two other tools:

1) A new Glorp port from VW to Pharo. In addition, we provide the DBX driver
for Glorp, by the name of GlorpDBX. Guillermo Polito is mostly working on
this.
2) A new tool that uses Magritte and the database metadata to automatically
generate the mappings between objects and tables. The idea is to do it
two-way:
a) read the metadata from an existing database -> create magritte
descriptions -> generate Glorp mappings -> query with Glorp
b) write magritte descriptions for the mappings -> generate database schema
-> generate Glorp mappings -> query with Glorp
or something like that....it is not completely decided but that's the idea.
This way we can autogenerate the Glorp mappings and then use Glorp normally.
Santiago Bragagnolo is working mostly on this.

The third product, and here the question, is going to be a UI for the
DBXTalk suite. This UI would do the core functionalities of tools like
SQLDeveloper, MySQL Explorer, pgAdmin, etc. This is basically:
- visualize and get information of: tables, views, schemas, relations,
indexes, etc.
- be able to modify the previous items and impact them in the database
- write queries and get results

So...why this tool if we can also use external tools like SQLDeveloper,
MySQL Explorer, pgAdmin, etc ?  a couple of reasons:
1) having the tool inside the image is easier (just the same way you
sometimes install an Eclipse plugin instead of using such programs)
2) the same tool works for all databases
3) we can customize it with particular things of DBX
Gisela Decuzzi is working mostly on this.

Now....what use cases do you think are useful for such UI ? what kind of
things would you like ?  what things we can do that are related to Glorp and
to the magritte tool?
what things can we do to have even more advantages than just using external
programs ?  I have the following things in mind:

- Special console for DBX/Glorp logs.
- Be able to edit Magritte description for mappings.
- Sync the tables and mapping while edditing.
- A new inspector for inspecting restultsets, where you see one rows and
columns.

Let us know.

Once again, thanks ESUG for the sponsorship to the team.


Mariano
http://marianopeck.wordpress.com
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