Re: [Phpsqliteadmin-devel] [LOGO] call for vote

[Steve D. <st...@wo...>]

Robin Bowes wrote:

> One thing occurs to me (as it does for the phpPgAdmin project) and that 
> is why are you not riding on the back of phpMyAdmin and simply replacing 
> the DB-specific stuff? Surely, that would be a simpler approach? Or am I 
> being too simplistic?

I wish it were that easy.  I actually started doing that, but there are 
some major differences.

One, being that no matter what frontend you're writing, you're going to 
be pulling a lot of metadata from the databases.  The queries are going 
to be absolutely different.  In SQLite it's something like querying 
master_database or something like that.. you can look at sqlite.org and 
it has some docs on how to pull the stuff out.

Well, there's other reasons, but they boil down to the same concept -- 
the queries are just too different because of how you're hitting system 
data, eventually.

It would be easy, however, to copy the layout and display of pma, I 
think.  There are a lot of HARD features to copy everything straight 
over though, and you would need to work on a good backend so you know 
how to go about doing that stuff.  For example, if someone wants to 
delete a row, and there's no primary key, how do you delete the right 
one?  Well, there's a couple of ways ... you could say "DELETE FROM 
table_name WHERE field1 = $field1, field2 = $field2, " etc ... or I 
think pma actually does something like "DELETE FROM table LIMIT 1 OFFSET 
$offset" where $offset is known based on the page you're displaying 
(display 30, start at offset 30), then the row number (delete row 5, so 
offset 30 + 5 .. ).  Pretty, smart actually.

The problem I keep running into when hacking on psa is whether to start 
from scratch and replicate the look/feel/functionality of pma or mangle 
the current release and try to mold it into something else.  The first 
option is fun until you realize you quickly have to have some kind of 
class to make the common functions easy, and the second one is 
entertaining until you realize you're hacking with frames and the layout 
can confuse you.

If I had to start all over again, I would just start building one from 
scratch -- not replicating pma in *every* respect, but instead starting 
with the very basic functions: display the databases, select a database, 
display the table metadata, display the table, add a query form.  And 
just go from there.  Things are much, much easier to work with once you 
have something where you can just *browse* your databases + data to see 
what you're working with, so you don't go quite insane. :)  I'm speaking 
partially from experience since I'm using sql server 2000 at work, and I 
had to develop a small frontend for it just so I wouldn't go insane. 
Building those basics is actually really, really easy.  I've even got it 
  so I can export any query to CSV which is cool.  But it's when you get 
down to the nitty-gritty like creating tables in a frontend, and 
deleting rows and stuff like that that it gets tough.

So, I don't really have any advice on how to go about building a db 
frontend, really.  Other than keep it simple, add features slowly, and 
write some functions and maybe a class to help you do the simple things.

My only suggestion would be to layout what features you want it to have, 
argue about how to implement it, make a function so it's easy to do, and 
then anticipate any errors that might come along and work around those, 
and get it working.  Worry about design, layout and look and feel last. 
  The important thing is to get the functionality coded and working and 
stable first.  Who cares if your frontend is a two framed html horror -- 
as long as it works, you can always go back later and add some css magic.

The great thing about writing a frontend to a dba is that 1) you get to 
learn it's possibilties and limitations REALLY quickly and 2) you don't 
have to manage everything command line anymore.

Anyway, I shouldnt say too much more, since I never really contribute 
anything.  Someday, I hope. :)

Steve

p.s. and if anyones interested, I can pass along some screenshots of my 
mssql frontend if you want to see what I'm talking about.