Guest Post: Eclipse 3.3.2 and DBEdit
On Tuesday, Eclipse told me it had updates (3.3.2) available. For the
next three days I got 404/503 errors from the mirror sites it tried to
use. I finally got it updated today and learned that they fixed
whatever was keeping DBEdit from working. So if Eclipse’s Database
Development views annoy you as much as me, upgrade when you get a
chance.
The difference between DBEdit and Eclipse’s take is quite telling. The
Eclipse one tends to information overload, showing you every possible
facet of the database you might want to look into. DBEdit tends to ease
of use, making it easy to query and edit the contents of tables.
Navigating to a table in Eclipse requires right-click-to-connect, then
about seven levels of tree expansion.
DBEdit connects on double click and then provides tables at most three
levels deep. You can double click on a table to see the data in the
table and can browse all the data. You don’t have to switch between
tabs after running every query. It doesn’t prompt you to save your SQL
queries when you run a program. DBEdit is a good example of
user-centered design. Focus on a specific problem (examining database
contents) and make it easy for the user to solve that problem.
Eclipse’s database tools are an example of model-focused design. Figure
out all of the parts of the domain and create a user interface that
follows that model. I’m sure there are things that the Database
Development perspective can do that DBEdit can’t, but those are things I
usually don’t want to do.
(Caveat: I haven’t played with Database Development Tools in 3.3.2, so
some of the UI quirks may have improved. But the interface
fundamentally makes it hard for me to do what I usually want to do.)