Removed Sybase parser from MANIFEST, update TODO.

[dbsrgits/SQL-Translator.git] / README

                      SQL::Translator README

SQL::Translator is a group of Perl modules that converts
vendor-specific SQL table definitions into other formats, such as
other vendor-specific SQL, ER diagrams, documentation (POD and HTML),
XML, and Class::DBI classes.  The main focus of SQL::Translator is
SQL, but parsers exist for other structured data formats, including
Excel spreadsheets and arbitrarily delimited text files.  Through the
separation of the code into parsers and producers with an object model
in between, it's possible to combine any parser with any producer, to
plug in custom parsers or producers, or to manipulate the parsed data
via the built-in object model.  Presently only the definition parts of
SQL are handled (CREATE, ALTER), not the manipulation of data (INSERT,
UPDATE, DELETE).

As of version 0.02, parsers exist for the following:

    Excel
    MySQL
    Oracle
    PostgreSQL
    Sybase
    xSV (arbitrarily delimited text files)

And the following producers exist:

    ClassDBI: Class::DBI classes
    Diagram: quasi-ER diagrams using libgd
    GraphViz: ER diagrams using GraphViz
    HTML: HTML documentation of schema
    MySQL: MySQL-specific schema
    Oracle: Oracle-specific schema
    POD: Plain Old Documenation of schema
    PostgreSQL: PostgreSQL-specific schema
    SQLite: SQLite-specific schema
    Sybase: Sybase-specific schema
    XML: structure of the schema described in XML

Included in this distribution are a few scripts designed to be user
interfaces for the actual SQL::Translator modules.  In the "bin"
directory, you will find:

*   sqlt-diagram.pl
*   sqlt-graph.pl
*   sql_translator.cgi
*   sql_translator.pl

All scripts ending in ".pl" are meant to be run from the command line
with various switches to control the input and output of the scripts,
while the ".cgi" script is a web-form frontend.  The script you'll
probably find most useful is the "sql_translator.pl" script which is
meant to be the main interface for translating from text-to-text.  The
graphic producers, however, have many extra switches, so there are
scripts specific for each of the the GraphViz and ER-diagram producers.
All scripts start with "sql" so it will be easier to identify them on
your system.  All the "*.pl" scripts will be installed in the normal
installation process, but you'll have to put the CGI script into your
web CGI directory to use it.

If you're more interested in using the SQL::Translator modules
directly, then you might be more interested to examine some of the
test scripts in the "t" directory.  While the test suite isn't
currently as thorough as it should be, you will definitely get the
idea of how to parse a file and manipulate the SQL::Translator::Schema
objects.

INSTALLATION

The regular method:

    $ perl Makefile.PL
    $ make
    $ make test
    $ su -
    # make install

AUTHORS

Ken Y. Clark, <kclark@cpan.org>, 
darren chamberlain <darren@cpan.org>,
Chris Mungall <cjm@fruitfly.org>, 
Allen Day <allenday@users.sourceforge.net>, 
Sam Angiuoli <angiuoli@users.sourceforge.net>, 
Ying Zhang <zyolive@yahoo.com>, 
Mike Mellilo <mmelillo@users.sourceforge.net>.

COPYRIGHT

This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it
under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the
Free Software Foundation; version 2.

This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but
WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General
Public License for more details.

You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along
with this program; if not, write to the Free Software Foundation, Inc.,
59 Temple Place, Suite 330, Boston, MA 02111-1307 USA

BUGS

Please use http://rt.cpan.org/ for reporting bugs.

SEE ALSO

Check out the SQLFairy homepage at Sourceforge for more information,
mailing lists, etc.:

    http://sqlfairy.sourceforge.net/