Dan Langille wrote:
>
> On Feb 4, 2009, at 5:50 PM, Kevin Keane wrote:
>
>> Here is a second feature request
>>
>> Item n:   Document the database design
>>  Origin: Kevin Keane, subscription AT kkeane DOT com
>>  Date:   February 4, 2009
>>  Status:
>>
>>  What:   I would like to see a complete documentation of all the
>> database tables.
>
> "Complete" is subjective.
>
> What do you define as complete? 
The single most important part of such documentation would be an ERD of 
the database. In fact, for me personally, that would probably be enough 
to figure out the rest.
Secondarily:
Describing the fundamental design philosophy behind the database (what 
kinds of items are being represented, how are they connected to each other?)
A list of all tables, along with their foreign keys.
A list of all fields in each table
A description of the meaning of each field (from a user perspective, not 
a technical description)
When a field is constrained, a list of the permissible values or 
whatever the constraint is.

All of that should be in the user documentation, not just in the 
developer documentation - because bconsole is a user tool.

Ultimately, though, my favorite would be to remove the sqlquery command 
altogether, and have more specific commands that do what users really 
want it to do. Users shouldn't have to dig through SQL code to solve 
their problems any more than they should have to dig through C/C++ code.
> What is missing that you want to see?
I wouldn't even know where to find a list of the tables or how they 
relate to each other.
> When we start the documentation, how can we tell when we're done?
Ah, the age-old question of technical writers ;-) Ultimately, you can't. 
Just do the best you can.
>> Why:    bconsole has the command "sqlquery" but without knowing what
>> to query for, it is fairly useless.
>>
>>  Notes:  Many common queries are accessible via the "query" command,
>> which completely hides the database. But query is limited to those few
>> predefined queries.
>>
>> Alternatively, instead of documenting the database, maybe it would be
>> better to remove the command "sqlquery" completely, since it is also
>> easy to abuse (what's to stop somebody from doing insert or update
>> queries?) Those people who really do need such low-level functionality
>> can use mysql or postgres directly.

-- 
Kevin Keane
Owner
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