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

On 11/25/06, Ritesh Nadhani <rn(dot)mailing(at)gmail(dot)com> wrote:
> Hello all
>
> Let me introduce myself first. I am the ex-lead developer of SQLyog
> (one of the most popular GUI for MySQL which is Windows only and runs
> on Linux through WINE, more info at http://www.webyog.com)
>
> ===
> New Project: wxWidgets based cross-platform GUI for Open Source databases
> ===
>
> ===
> Motivation
> ===
>
> I have recently shifted to US to study for MS (and hopefully PhD in Univ
> of Iowa). I have also shifted to Mac OS X as my primary usage machine
> (after lifetime of Windows devotion).
>
> As part of my coursework, I work with MySQL and PostgreSQL
> extensively. I searched but couldnt find any GUI which has similar
> power like SQLyog by any means. I have tried (and have tried before
> also) various GUIs for respective databases but somehow the features
> in them are restrictive and are not powerful enough for developers
> like me who writes lots of SQL queries and needs to get things done
> fast.

I think you should look for inspiration in the EMS suite, which while
windows-only and closed source is a pretty feature packed and cross
(db) platform. You are on very well traveled ground here.

IMO, I think the 'enterprise manager' style tool market is pretty well
saturated for most databases. I also think dropping standard drivers
(jdbc) from your project is a mistake unless you think you can do
better. Also now you are writing two projects. I'm not trying to
discourage you...it's just a lot of work...ask Dave Page :-) This is
coming from someone who implemented a driver of sorts from the ground
up for PostgreSQL, namely ISAM support. Your efforts might be better
spent improving the standard driver you most feel comfortable with.

Another thing is that the current crop of gui admin tools focus on
wizards and dialogs and not so much on classic code management. What
I personally would really want to see is a souped up text editor with
very smart code completion tools (auto completing tables, columns,
etc) sort of like ctags but optimized for sql. I would avoid emphasis
of dialog based sql property editing which I consider orthogonal to
good sql development practices.

If these comments seem a bit generic, take a good look at Source
Insight (windows only, sigh) as a tool more geared towards code
management. It's really quite amazing.

merlin