Telling tables what their fields are

[Ed Kleban]

On 11/19/05 12:23 AM, "Ruslan Zasukhin" <sunshine at public.kherson.ua> wrote:

> On 11/19/05 6:47 AM, "Ed Kleban" <Ed at Kleban.com> wrote:
>   
>> If I'm interpreting this right, then if you choose to use the classes way as
>> shown in the examples then your database structure isn't sufficiently whole
>> for tools such as VS to view and navigate it.  Is that correct?  Is that
>> desirable?  It there a workaround?
> 
> Again STOP.
> 
> Tools as Valentina Studio and viSQL cannot use Class Way. NEVER.
>     because they do not know structure of any db they going to open
>

Yes, but I want to "eat my cake and have it too" as we say here.  I want to
use classes way to define my databases, and then be able to inspect them on
disk with VS :)

So let's talk a bit about how we might fake that or what some of the
inherent problems are...

I accept what you say, namely that "[This can] NEVER [be done] because [VS
and viSQL] do not know [the] structure of any db they are going to open."

One of the options for saving out your database is to save the schema in a
separate file from the rest of the data.  Let's say I did that for my
database created with the classes way, but then took the schema saved from
another database defined the SQL way, but which was not populated with any
data.   Could I combine the Schema from the SQL way with the data files from
the Classes way, and -- assuming they were correctly coded to match -- end
up with a database that my RB code could reopen and use and which a VS or
viSQL tool could also browse?

If so, don't I have enough information within my RB environment to parse the
structure of the daabase I create and essentailly generate the SQL code
capable of creating this separate database?

And if so, can't I then just feed that into SQL from within the application
to create a separate database from which I can later move the schema file
over and use?

> Class Way can be used only when you EXACTLY know future structure of your
> db.  In YOUR app you will know this. You have draw diagram

Yes.