[Tutor] "Object designer" applications - are there any?

[Alan Gauld]

On 05/08/11 12:01, Flynn, Stephen (L & P - IT) wrote:

> Anyway, nearly all of this work, at some point, involves me reading a Data Dictionary
 > for the source system and converting it to an Oracle table definition.

> More often than not this DDL is in text form and I convert it to Oracle DDL such as
>
> Create Table wibble
> ( clientref    NUMBER(10) not null,
>    bthdte    NUMBER(5) not null,
>    natinr_no VARCHAR2(16) not null,
> etc
> )
>
> It struck me that if I write a "read in Sybase DDL and spit out Oracle DDL" routine
 > and so forth, I'd get a lot of reuse out of it.

> However, I've not done much OOP at all

I'm not sure you need OOP for this. As you say a "routine" ie a function 
might be all you need along with some data structures - probably 
dictionaries to define the translations needed.

> Perhaps most people just design their objects on paper and let
 >  the code do the documentation for them...

It depends on the complexity. For a big project (say >25 classes)
I'd use a UML design tool like IBM RSA (Rational Rose as was) or Borland 
Together. But for small projects Visio/Power[point and some 
documentation in the code would suffice. And for very small
designs (2 or 3 classes) it would just be the code!

Biut for this it seems that a simple function to generte the DDL
based on an input translation table should be feasible, with
no objects required. (You could use objects of course if you really want 
but I don't think they're necessary, or even particularly
helpful, in this case.

-- 
Alan G
Author of the Learn to Program web site
http://www.alan-g.me.uk/