Re: Feedback on pgAdmin II

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Jean-Michel POURE [mailto:jm(dot)poure(at)freesurf(dot)fr]
> Sent: 01 September 2001 15:05
> To: pgadmin-hackers(at)postgresql(dot)org
> Subject: [pgadmin-hackers] Feedback on pgAdmin II
>
>
> Hello Dave,
>
> I installed pgAdmin II latest snapshot and Cygwin under
> Windows NT. pgAdmin II obviously has a marvelous GUI.
> Marvelous job as always.

Thanks!

> 1) Cygwin
> The bad news is that it took me 4 hours to install Cygwin and run
> Postgresql as a service under Windows NT.
> The installation process of Cygwin is not intended for
> newbies like myself
> (who is it for, then ???).
> Are you aware of any plans to automate installation of
> Postgresl under Windows? Besides, Cygwin is a very nice product.

You didn't build/compile it yourself did you? PostgreSQL ships prebuilt with
Cygwin these days - it took me about 10 minutes to get going with 7.1.3 the
other day. If you run the Cygwin setup program, make sure you select
PostgreSQL as an app to install. Then just follow the instructions in
/usr/doc/postgresql-7.1.3/README

> 2) Icons
> On my workstation, some icons do not display well.
> Icons probably need 256 color depth to display correctly.
> I will have a look at pgAdmin II icons and graphics tomorrow.

Yes, so don't look great. Mark designed them all one lunch-time at work
using the icon editor in Visual Studio 6. He did a great job for a 'non
artist' (far better than I could have done) but there is room for
improvement. I'm quite happy with the toolbar icons though - a couple of
people have commented on how they like them.

> 3) Further improvements
> If you need help, I can work on project rebuilding features
> under your
> guidance.

I think the first thing to do is get the more advanced object editing in
place (view/trigger/function/table editing etc.). pgSchema provides a good
framework for this, and pgAdmin itself was designed to make it a 2 minute
job to change an object property from read-only to read-write.

> I can also help you writing a docbook documentation and maintaining a
> professional web site.
> What do you think? What are your plans now?

Documentation is usually a problem because we don't have time, but if you
check out the Help menu you will find proper HTML Help at last. Currently,
this is a copy of the website, and I think this is the way to go. That way
we have all the docs on the web, and in the apps helpfile, and all we have
to do is maintain one set of HTML files.

The design is pretty basic though - once we have a logo/colours then we can
look to improve that.

>
> 4) Feature request
> Half of users questions are related to socket connection
> problems. People in the Windows world are not used to
> hba_files configuration.

I did consider a plugin to write your (platform independant) pg_hba.conf for
you - you've just confirmed that it would be a good idea. You may have
noticed that the plugins are only available once you have connected to the
server. This is because they use a pointer to the svr object. Anyway, I was
considering a new class of plugin (a tool?) which didn't have access to the
svr object. Things like rexec, a db 'ping' utility (to test accessibility -
the Informix Client SDK has this tool and it's useful to test your IP
config, ODBC config and network connectivity) and your pg_hba.conf editor
could be included.

> There is a need for a small postmaster configuration utility
> comparable to
> the MS SQL Server one:
> - to automate creation of postmaster service (this may solve
> Cygwin problem),
> - to define socket connection rules,
> - to show postmaster state in the deskbar.
> Do you think this can be added to the todo list (not as a
> priority project)?

I'm not so sure about connecting to PostgreSQL to this extent. How would you
monitor the server for example?

Regards, Dave.