Re: Database Schema Manager

i dont know if this is already part of what you will do, but here is just my idea. what do you think about splitting off the structure-thing into seperate packages. what i mean is to put the stuff that describes a db-structure and each table in a seperate class. so that you would have i.e. the two packages: DB_Structure with i.e. the following methods getTableNames() getRelations($table) - returns the relations the given table has to other tables using foreign keys getRelatedTables() getTable($tableName) - returns an instance of DB_Structure_Table etc. ... DB_Structure_Table - works on one table and provides methods such as: getColumns() getType($column) getIndex() getPrimaryKey() ... i just had this idea while restructuring DB_QueryTool, and the SQL Renderer stuff, which should also be capable of joining tables automatically, by knowing the relations, which would be done "asking" external classes, such as the ones i mentioned above. and i can imagine that there will be many more use cases for that. hth wolfram Lukas Smith wrote:

Hi, I am working on separating the Schema Manager in MDB into a separate package. The idea is that the new Manager will actually not require MDB anymore. Instead the main part of the manager is handling array structures that represent a schema. These array structures can be build up one by one, merged, compared etc. Also the Manager can call a parser or a writer to read or write a schema. I intent to provide the following parsers: - XML (old parser) - SQL (new) - MDB (old reverse engineering) and the following writers: - XML (new, used to be embedded in the manager) - SQL (new) - MDB (old default behaviour) There are all sorts of other parser and writers possible (someone else needs to decide if they are feasible enough to be implemented) like: - PEAR DB - WDDX - Excel - PDF - etc. Here is my preliminary work on the API: http://www.backendmedia.com/MDB/Manager/ I don't know yet how to name it. Basically the schema manager does not require MDB by default anymore. Actually it is possible to write a writer and/or parser for any database abstraction layer. So possible names are as follows: DB_Manager MDB_Manager DB_Schema_Manager MDB_Schema_Manager ... Regards, Lukas Smith smith@backendmedia.com _______________________________ BackendMedia www.backendmedia.com berlin@backendmedia.com Linn Zwoch Smith GbR Pariser Str. 44 D-10707 Berlin Tel +49 30 83 22 50 00 Fax +49 30 83 22 50 07

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