dbPAL Universal Database Toolkit.

DbPAL, from IT-Map Int. is a new concept in database design and management that provides a complete suite of tools linked by an intuitive user interface which replaces the need to write SQL scripts, using instead a drag and drop icon-based approach.

The dbPAL suite, a tool for application systems developers, database administrators and designers of entry-level data warehousing projects, consists of the database design facility (dbPAL Studio), an interactive database manipulation and management facility (dbPAL Workshop), a scripted database management facility (dbPAL Director) and a database design and test data inventory for change control (dbPAL Central).

dbPAL Studio

The dbPAL Studio provides a multi-dimension, desktop database approach uniform across all common DBMS formats as it takes care of the SQL metadata creation for each database type, so that programmers only need to learn dbPAL once to be able to master many different DBMS types. The Studio's ability to cut/paste/drag/drop objects within and between multiple schema allows fast development of new and updated schemas. Conversion between database types becomes easy due to dbPAL's ability to view multiple DBMS types against each other, with differences highlighted to alert the user of potential loss of data or intelligence, dbPAL Studio allows the user access to all tables, fields and other schema objects within one viewer that automatically adjusts itself according to the primary database type being edited.

Editing and viewing facilities, include cut & paste, enhance developer performance. Field level constraints can be restricted to min-max values, structured using dbPAL's integrated editor, or free format.

dbPAL Workshop

The Workshop provides a simple GUI-based command center for database creation, schema manipulation and data manipulation scenarios. It is used to reverse engineer database schemas, to create new databases from dbPAL Studio edited schemas, and to automatically update database schemas after change. To create a command, the appropriate command icon is dragged and dropped onto dbPAL's workbench. The system then creates a visual representation of the The Workshop can be used to extract full or partial datasets from databases and to create de-normalized views for conversions that are used to update other databases from these datasets -- choosing either to load from fresh, to update or to synchronize data at the record and field level.

dbPAL Central

Wherever multiple databases exist, especially in the development or test environment, it is easy to lose track of exactly why any particular instance was created. Reference to the name only gives a few clues about the database and particular version, dbPAL Central track all database versions, schema objects, dataset objects, studios, workshops and PALScripts that have been created with dbPAL. These objects are both organized by and stored in the dbPAL Central database and organized by Project, Application and Object with connection references to database instances being kept by the system, reducing the overhead in locating and accessing them. dbPAL Central also makes provision for object security, allowing the owner to assign sharing and read only access.

Details of the other modules of dbPAL are on www.it-map.com