[wseubert]

I’m running Eclipse 3.0.1 and MyEclipse 3.8.3.

I tried to create an ER Diagram by right clicking on it in the tree in the dBase explorer. It started to make a diagram by giving me a digram with all of my tables but none of the tables have any detail to them.

The dBase I’m connecting to is from Access 97.

[Riyad Kalla]

This is most likely a driver issue (I”m guessing JDBC-ODBC?) can you open your Eclipse log file and check for any exceptions that may have been recoreded that are related to this?

<workspace dir>\.metadata\.log

[wseubert]

Nothing about this in the error log, just an exception saying the internal web browser is not operational.

As far as the driver, do you know of another free driver that’ll connect to an Access dBase?

[Brian Fernandes]

Could you give me details of exactly what driver(s) you are using to connect?

Also, please confirm that you are able to see the table Columns in the DB Browser.

Open up the tree under the Schema (where you right clicked to create the database).
You should see a node titled “TABLE”, among other nodes. Under that you should see all the tables in your schema and under each table you should see the columns.

This will help me ascertain whether the problem lies within the ER Designer or there is something wrong with your drivers.

Thanks,
Brian.

[wseubert]

The driver I’m using is “sun.jdbc.odbc.JdbcOdbcDriver”.

I can see the table info perfectly through the DB Browser. I can see them via the Tree view in the DB Browser and also in the Table Info (Columns) View. The information in the Table Info View is also correct.

[Brian Fernandes]

Thanks for the info.

Have you tried creating the diagram again or refreshing the diagram ?

Nevertheless – if you cannot see detail on initial create, there is something wrong.
I am setting up a local Access DB for testing and will look into the matter shortly.

[wseubert]

Yeah, I have tried to create it again and refresh several times.

If you want a copy of my dBase for some reason, just let me know. It’s about 2.5 MB or I could sent you the .java files I’m using to create and initialize it.

Just let me know if you need any more info…

[Brian Fernandes]

I appreciate the offer, but fortunately it isn’t necessary. I was able to replicate your problem using the driver you specified and will fix it shortly.

I would like to mention that the problem is related to the inadequacies of the driver you are using. It cannot retrieve primary / foreign key data from the database.

Of course, the designer should have worked even in the absence of PK data – this is a bug; at the same time I would like to prepare you for further limitations. ie. You will not see any key annotations in your database, nor will you be able to see relations between tables.

FYI: I was able to see the Access DB in it’s entirety by using another driver. Unfortunately this is an evaluation version – and I was unable to locate any other free drivers.
I haven’t searched an awful lot though, please post back here if you find another free driver for MS Access.

Thank you for your patience,
Brian.

[wseubert]

I’ve being seeing here and there that the driver has a lot of limitations (like only being able to retrieve the first ~256 chars of a string via SQL) but I haven’t come accross a nice free alternative for Access. I will eventually be deploying with Oracle so I was kind of just ignoring these little bumps in the road.

Maybe it’s time to bite the bullet and move on to something like MySQL. Should I expect better results with MySQL or is there another free dBase you would recommend?

Thanks for everything,
Wally

[Riyad Kalla]

Wally,
MySQL is going to give you the most tested/best experience for our tools IMO because I would say most of us (users included) have the most experience banging on it. As far as comparing databases to eachother, PostgreSQL is going to be the closest open source alternative to Oracle. MySQL is awesome for read heavy sites if you don’t mind sacrificing advanced DB functionalities. There are long articles discussing these comparisons on the web.

[Brian Fernandes]

Wally,

The ER – Designer has been tested successfully (and is fully functional) for both Oracle and MySQL 🙂

If you are looking for free DBs – you could have a look at PostgreSQL and HSQLDB in addition to MySQL. I’m afraid that only you would be the best person to decide which DB is best for your application.
I would suggest looking at the feature sets of each DB & ensuring that they meet your requirements before making a switch (obviously).

All the best !

Brian.

[Author]

Posts