RE: [CDBI] ERD's

It's definitely close to what I'm looking for.

I tinkered a whole with the script and unfortunately I have multiple
primary keys in some circumstances in mysql which means the primary keys
are set wrong with loader which in turn confuses has_a. Infact the
database I'm forced to work with is very poor. I think I will just
re-write Class::DBI::Loader::Graphiz to be Class::DBI::Graphiz.

I'll post the finished product to cpan or similar.

Daniel


-----Original Message-----
From: Andrew O'Brien [mailto:[email protected]] 
Sent: Thursday, 16 November 2006 12:14 PM
To: classdbi-Ra3b/[email protected]
Subject: RE: [CDBI] ERD's


Hi Daniel,

> Does anyone know of scripts/module that can create pretty 
> ERD's based on
> my Class::DBI.

Have a look at:

GraphViz
GraphViz::DBI
Class::DBI::Loader::GraphViz

If you've got a supported DB with detectable/programmable foreign keys
then they work reasonably well. The output isn't the prettiest thing
you've ever seen but it works.

I have the extra problem that relationships in my particular case (mysql
w/o foreign key constraints and some strangely inconsistent fk naming on
columns) need to come from Class::DBI modules rather than from the DB. I
whipped up a quick wrapper script then generates & executes another perl
script with the has_a relationships hard coded.

There are probably better ways to do this but it worked for me :)

Comes with command line help but a sample execution:

./db_diagram.pl --module_base Oriel::Something --path
~/src/lib/Oriel/Something --dsn 'dbi:mysql:something' --user andrewo
--pass password --outfile diagram.ps

It can also optionally munge the (occasionally large-scale) [e]ps output
file to force it to A3 as we have an A3 printer here. Works well enough
but assumes you're in a unix environment with the psnup command.

If this is something that people find useful I can probably fix it
up/extend it further.

Hope it helps!


Andrew