Visual Query Builder

[Guest]

Hello !

I am currently trying out the CFBuilder beta on a laptop running MS Windows XP Pro SP3 with 2GB RAM.  I also have the developer edition of Coldfusion 8 installed on that machine running the local server.

The RDS Viewer appears to be configured correctly and I can see all of the tables for all of the databases I have declared in CF Admin and I can execute SQL statements as well as view the contents of each table but I do not have the button on the RDS Viewer to activate the visual query builder.  Where is the visual query builder ?  The user guide mentions that this should be available but I don't appear to have the button for it and can therefore not use it.

Is the visual query builer feature missing in this beta ?  Is anyone else having the same problem and what did you do to rectify it ?  What am I doing wrong ?

I would appreciate some help.

Thank you.

Ed

[Charlie Arehart]

Ed, there is no visual query builder. There was one in the older Adobe "ColdFusion 8 Extensions for Eclipse", but not in CFBuilder itself. My understanding is that it was based on Delphi, and as that wasn't supported on other the Windows, it was not ported. (I lament its loss as well, at least for those of us who knew of the tool. Most never did, really, in my experience.)

Now, you say, "The user guide mentions that this should be available". I'm looking at the PDF of the public beta user guide ("Using Adobe ColdFusion Builder") and I find no mention of it. The only mention of querying is with regard to the RDS Query Viewer, and the one place (p 15) where it talks about query building, it does say:

- Type the query in the blank area.

- Select the server and data source from the drop-down list.

- Click Execute Query. The results of the query are displayed in the RDS Query Viewer area.

There's no mention of any visual aspect. Did you see something else? I realize you may have simply connected "RDS Query Viewer" with "visual query builder", in your mind. It is indeed a "viewer", in that you can view the query results right there. And in the RDS Dataview view, you can also right-click a table and choose "show all contents", which shows all records in the RDS Query Viewer.

And it's worth noting for some readers at least that if they hadn't noticed, you can at least the two views together to help build your query via drag and drop: you can drag and drop tables and columns from the RDS Dataview pane into the RDS Query Viewer pane.

But it's not a visual query builder in the true sense, such as if we dragged colums from two related tables it would build the join automatically.

/charlie

[Charlie Arehart]

I meant to add that there is are in fact other Eclipse-based database query tools that one may want to consider for more functionality:

Eclipse SQL Explorer - http://eclipsesql.sourceforge.net/

QuantumDB - http://quantum.sourceforge.net/

I mention these (and other non-Eclipse-based query tools) in my CF411 site category on them, http://www.cf411.com/#query.

Then, too, there is also a Database Explorer view that comes with Aptana (which is bundled in CFBuilder). You can find it with Window>show view>other>databases. Curiously, unlike the full version in Aptana as described here (http://www.aptana.com/docs/index.php/Database_Explorer), the one in CFB seems limited to connecting only to Derby and SQLLite databases. We can't even provide the JDBC connection string to try to point ot others.

(And lest one get excited about using the Derby (embedded) option when creating a new connection in that window, that means an embedded derby database embedded in CFBuilder, not one embedded in CF itself. There is the "derby (network)" option, but that will work only if you've set up the network server feature of Derby. For more on those things, see a talk I did on the topic at http://www.carehart.org/presentations/#derby).

Anyway, I've not yet explored the other two alternatives above. Has anyone else?

(PS if any of you get the forum feed by email, sorry if what you saw got truncated above. I just learned that if you inadvertantly do "Ctrl-S" while typing in these forums (on the web interface), it automatically saves and POSTs the message. Yikes.)

[Guest]

Charlie,

Thanks for the info on additional plug ins !

Ed

[Guest]

Charlie,

Thank you for responding.

You are correct.  I checked the CFBuilder user's guide again and you are right.  There is no mention there of a visual query builder.  I don't know what I was originally looking at but I thought that was where it was being mentioned.

Maybe Adobe will add this functionality after the initial 1.0 release.

Thank you.

Ed

[Jose_Galdamez]

Hey Charlie,

Thanks for your responses. I didn't originally have questions about the missing Visual Query Builder (I've always been on a Mac), but your links did point out some really neat and interesting tools which I didn't know about.

I just tried out Ray Camden's web-based "Database Explorer" which you link to in your CF411 column. This one is very cool!

As for the two Eclipse plug-ins you mentioned, I haven't tried them out myself. I'd have to make sure I can get them to work with SQL Server before going anywhere with them. It appears you can with some additional configuration.

Personally, the RDS Query Viewer is pretty good enough for the queries I need to run. I do have some complaints about it, but I think I'll create a separate thread for them.