ER Modeler A Database Modeling Toolkit for Eclipse

E-R Modeler: A Database Modeling Toolkit for Eclipse Hui Wu wuh -at- cis. uab. edu http: //www. cis. uab. edu/wuh Academic Advisor : Dr. Jeff Gray gray -at- cis. uab. edu http: //www. gray-area. org University of Alabama at Birmingham Department of Computer & Information Sciences

Motivation • Enhance DB Modeling Capability of Eclipse • Provide capabilities such as XML and DDL generation, DB connection as well as DB schema creation • Support reverse engineering of existing databases

E-R Modeler Architecture

System Design – Primary Function Modules • Diagram editor – A UML-style diagramming tool to construct and modify E-R models. • Outline view and Property view – Communicate and synchronize with the drawing Canvas to display the outline, composition and properties of entities and relationships • File IO – Store/load the E-R diagram to/from a binary file – Store the internal data structure (entities, attributes, primary keys and relationships, etc) into an XML file

System Design – Primary Function Modules (cont’d) • Data Definition Language (DDL) generation – Load the XML file as a DOM tree and traverse the DOM tree – Generate physical DDL based on the underlying database • DB table generation – Connect to the underlying database (Access/SQL Server/SQL Plus) – Execute the physical DDL to create database schema

Implementation – What extension points we extent • • • perspectives – framework new. Wizards – new project & files editors – diagram & XML & SQL editor action. Sets – toolbar actions property. Pages – property view preference. Pages – color changing of characters in the XML editor • toc – online help

The E-R Modeler Framework Model explorer Diagram editor DB connection Dialog Model outline view Model property view

Future Work • Implement support for reverse engineering • Provide automatic layout support • Support for additional file types • Enrich ER object types like weak entity • Add extension-points for other plug-ins to build on

Credits Leading Developers: Song Zhou, Chris Xu Supporting Programmers: Hui Wu, Yuehua Lin, Jing Zhang, Juanqin Wang Advisors: Dr. Jeff Gray, Dr. Barrett Bryant

Demo

Thanks