NetNews Usenet Archive 1992 #18/NN_1992_18.iso/spool/comp/sys/next/programm/5741

Text File | 1992-08-21 | 3.4 KB | 72 lines

Newsgroups: comp.sys.next.programmer
Path: sparky!uunet!usc!sdd.hp.com!mips!carbon!news.cs.indiana.edu!syscon!gator!towers!mwhhlaw!bob
From: uunet!mwhhlaw!bob (Robert L. Hartley Jr.)
Subject: Re: DBKit Help (puhleeze)
Message-ID: <[e-mail]>
Sender: [e-mail]
Reply-To: [e-mail]
Organization: Martin Wade Hartley & Hollingsworth
References: <[e-mail]>
Date: Fri, 21 Aug 1992 18:32:05 GMT
Lines: 59

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail]
writes:
> If you can find the time
I don't know if it's a question of time.  We signed contracts not
circulate Beta stuff.

Maybe this will help.  To use use DBKit you must have an "Adaptor" to
your database.  3.0 will have Sybase and Oracle adaptors with it.  Then
within Sybase or Oracle you have to build your tables.  Then you run a
program called DBModeler, in which you spell out to DBKit what parts of
your database you want your application to see, and how you want them
to be seen.  Essentially a table is called an entity, and a column or
field is called a property.  You select entities and properties.  You
establish relationships between any two (note this limit) properties in
the same entity or different entities.  Your model can include as many
relationships as you want.  After you have made your model, you can use
Interface Builder, in which DBKit must be loaded as a palette.  On that
palette, you find three icons.  One represents a DBModel, which you can
drag into your application, and then you get access to all the
entities, properties, and relationships you included in your model  (I
think you can include more than one DBModel if you want.)  The other
two icons on the palette represent interface objects.  One is an image
field, which you can drag into a window and to which you can then
connect to a property in the DBModel.  You would use an image to
display data from binary fields.  The other is a Table View (much like
a browser), which has rows and columns and is scrollable, which you can
drag onto a window and to which you can connect properties from your
model.  You can also connect properties from your model to other
palette object like views, text fields, etc.

About the time 3.0 comes out look for some third party objects and
palettes to enhance the list of interface objects to which properties
from the model can be connected.

From my limited experience so far, you can only do the simplest of
database operations with interface builder.  To do anything
sophisticated, you must write the code.  DBKit includes dozens of
objects and methods by which you can do this.  But it is complex.  As I
understand it, DBKit keeps the stuff it gets from the database in
stream objects.  It keeps all the display stuff in other objects, and
another set of objects keeps the streams and display objects in sync.

While DBKIt appears very rich in functionality, it does have limits.
For example the relationships is recognizes are not in any way complex.
Since there are mechanisms to pass SQL commands through to the
database, I assume that with enough effort, one could programatically
accomplish about anything, but the solution would not necessarily be
elegant.

Without sending you the Beta documentation (which we are not allowed to
do), I don't know what else to say.



--
Bob Hartley
MARTIN, WADE, HARTLEY & HOLLINGSWORTH
P. O. Box 88676
3590 N. Meridian St.