Richard Troy wrote: > Let me put it this way; Right now I have to support (at least) five > RDBMSes: Postgres, Informix, Sybase, DB2, Oracle - and we're > considering ANTS. The idea of a cross-dbms admin tool sounds great > but is USELESS - not worth my time - if it doesn't address these > every-day-in-production needs because, lets face it, I'll _still_ > have to use those platform specific mechanisms - and if I have to > access them _anyway,_ why bother with yet another tool that doesn't > do the job? I missed the beginning of this thread, but I agree with Richard. Not to be a wet rag, but I think a cross-DBMS admin tool is doomed, other than at a level that Aqua Data Studio already provides. To provide the deep functionality that work-a-day DB admins require, you'll have to provide DBMS-specific functionality. You've thought about that already - allow plugins. But do some graphical design that considers how all this will fit together. At a minimum, you'll need a general section or page *per object type* that contains things that are consistent across DBMSs, then you'll need a corresponding section or page *per object type* that handle DBMS-specific extensions. Once you start laying all that out, you'll see why DBMS-specific admin tools exist. As for language, I don't agree that Java is too restrictive. "Millions of rows" typically occur in the application space, not in the admin space. The only time admins encounter that type of volume is backups, recoveries, copies, etc., which will likely be in the DBMS-specific realm. -- Guy Rouillier
