Re: Development of cross-platform GUI for Open Source DBs

Richard Troy wrote:
> Let me put it this way; Right now I have to support (at least) five
> RDBMSes: Postgres, Informix, Sybase, DB2, Oracle - and we're
> considering ANTS. The idea of a cross-dbms admin tool sounds great
> but is USELESS - not worth my time - if it doesn't address these
> every-day-in-production needs because, lets face it, I'll _still_
> have to use those platform specific mechanisms - and if I have to
> access them _anyway,_ why bother with yet another tool that doesn't
> do the job?

I missed the beginning of this thread, but I agree with Richard. Not to
be a wet rag, but I think a cross-DBMS admin tool is doomed, other than
at a level that Aqua Data Studio already provides. To provide the deep
functionality that work-a-day DB admins require, you'll have to provide
DBMS-specific functionality. You've thought about that already - allow
plugins. But do some graphical design that considers how all this will
fit together. At a minimum, you'll need a general section or page *per
object type* that contains things that are consistent across DBMSs, then
you'll need a corresponding section or page *per object type* that
handle DBMS-specific extensions. Once you start laying all that out,
you'll see why DBMS-specific admin tools exist.

As for language, I don't agree that Java is too restrictive. "Millions
of rows" typically occur in the application space, not in the admin
space. The only time admins encounter that type of volume is backups,
recoveries, copies, etc., which will likely be in the DBMS-specific
realm.

--
Guy Rouillier