E-R Modeler: A Database Modeling Toolkit for Eclipse

Hui Wuwuh -at- cis.uab.edu

http://www.cis.uab.edu/wuh

Academic Advisor : Dr. Jeff Graygray -at- cis.uab.edu

http://www.gray-area.org

University of Alabama at BirminghamDepartment 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

• 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

The E-R Modeler Framework

Model explorer

Model outline view

Modelproperty view

Diagram editor

DB connection Dialog

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

CreditsLeading Developers:

Song Zhou, Chris Xu

Supporting Programmers: Hui Wu,Yuehua Lin, Jing Zhang,

Juanqin WangAdvisors:

Dr. Jeff Gray, Dr. Barrett Bryant

Demo

Thanks