Re: [OJB-developers] Re: Visual Tool?

[<Joa...@tp...>]

Thomas Mahler <tho...@ho...> wrote:
> Apart from providing mapping functionality (which allow to map existing
> java classes on existing RDBMS tables) we want to have forward- and
> reverse engineering features in this workbench :
> - from a Java Class model to an xml-repository and to RDBMS tables
> - from tables to classes and to an xml-repository.
> - from a xml-repository to classes and tables.

I thought about using XDoclect (http://xdoclet.sf.net/) for the first one.
XDoclet is basically a Doclet on steroids. This would allow such things as
specifing details as Java-Doc @tags. The XML2DLL is another step in this
(although it needs the ability to produce code for several different RDMS),
so this would finish point 1.

with this available there would be a need for conversion
- from tables to classes and
- from xml-repository to classes (which I think is easier).

For most of these things to be implemented nicely we'd need a final
DTD/Schema, as it would have to be reworked when the DTD changes (and from
what I read in the archive, the pending DTD change should be more than a
simple renaming of tags.)

It seems that the Discussion about a different DTD stoped without any real
changes on the core. I for one would prioritize finalizing a clean
DTD/Schema (mostly because we are just working our way into OJB and I
dislike having to re-learn stuff).

> There have been several discussions on this topic in the forums.
> There is also an outdated entry in the SourceForge TaskManager sketching
> my overall idea.
>
> There is also a contrib package on the download page
> (contrib-0.7.343.tgz). This archive contains some experimental code
> regarding DDL generation.

it seems somewhat out of date (importing classes that are no longer there).

we need to decide wether we want to use OJB or Kodo JDO rather soon
(probably tomorrow), and personally I'd prefer OJB. If OJB wins, I'll have
quite some time to work on OJB.

btw, why is CVS not mainted? is there any special reason? Are the releases
the only public updates?

regards
Joachim Sauer