Schema management tool

I just saw this very old post and thought I'd respond for the benefit of
the list:

Patrick,

> Could someone give me some advice or point me to an article that would help
> manage views? I have a view that I use in conjunction with other views,
> and since I have to drop the view and then recreate it, I'm force to drop
> and recreate all other views that the original view was used in.
> TIA

As I recall, the IT staff at Action Target, Inc. two years ago developed a
non-free tool for this purpose. They were planning to start a spin-off
company to market PostgreSQL admin tools, but I don't know how far they got
with the idea.

Try contacting Action Target's webmaster to see if you can find anything out:
webmaster ( at ) actiontarget ( dot ) com

We have a free (GPL) tool called "wyseman" that is a framework for
authoring schemas in postgres. You create a meta-sql structure for each
database object you want in the database. Then you call wyseman to drop
and/or re-create the object, along with all its dependencies.

This is a great tool for working on a live database. You can maintain a
pristine, authoritative definition of your schema, and still migrate
your live database along as you make changes to the design. When you
want to modify a section of the schema that is deep within the tree of
dependencies, wyseman will take care of dropping, rebuilding, and
granting permissions on all the necessary objects in order to get into
the part you want to change.

Wyseman also takes care of building a "data dictionary" where you can
query for things like printable titles, and pop-up helps for tables and
columns in multiple languages. This is a nice layer to put on top of
postgres and just under your ERP.

These tools are accessible on wyatterp.com. Due to lack of time, I have
not kept current software in the download area. We are using much later
stuff in-house. But I would be happy to share more recent versions if
there is any interest out there. It would be particularly helpful if
anyone were willing to help maintain the website and (currently a sad
excuse for) documentation.

There is also a run-time library (wylib) for rapid construction of ERP
applications. We have about 30 applications built in the framework that
run our entire business.

Kyle Bateman
Action Target Inc.