ER Modeler: A Database Modeling Toolkit for Eclipse

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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

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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

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E-R Modeler Architecture
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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

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System Design Primary Function Modules (contd)

• 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

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Implementation What extension points we extent

• perspectives framework
• newWizards new project files
• editors diagram XML SQL editor
• actionSets toolbar actions
• propertyPages property view
• preferencePages color changing of characters in
  the XML editor
• toc online help

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

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Credits

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

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Demo
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Thanks