ANN: Context Database Designer v.2.02 beta is now available!

Dear Friends,

We're happy to announce, that the second fully functional beta
version of Context Database Designer v.2 has been realeased and
is available for download at:

  http://www.contextsoft.com/products/dbdesign/downloads.jsp.

Great screenshots are availble at:
  http://www.contextsoft.com/products/dbdesign/screenshots.jsp

We strongly advise all beta 1 users to upgrade to this beta 2
release as it fixes several major problems and adds many great
features, including:
 - Extensive support for MS SQL Server 2000.
 - Table level CHECK CONSTRAINT(s).
 - Support for NATIONAL CHAR, VARCHAR and CLOB data types.
 - Added generic database adapters, allowing to access more
 databases from the standalone application. This makes it
 easier to add support for more database engines in future.
 (Adapters are dlls, located under 'adapters' subfolder of
 installation. Their source code is also available as a
 separate download.)
 - Relationships handling has been reworked and greatly
 improved, making it more stable and reliable. Now each
 relationship is defined as one singular object and not as
 two separate objects (one for each participating table) as
 it was before. Also relationships better control
 cardinality and can automatically add constraints required
 to enforce it.
 - SQL generation has been greatly improved, allowing for
 more extensive customization and providing support for more
 SQL features (which was particularly important for
 implementing MS SQL 2000 support).
 - SQL import has been greatly improved, allowing to
 correctly import triggers, views and stored procedures
 defined with different SQL dialects.
 - Diagramming has been improved by adding (optional) IE
 notation for link drawing.
 - Links avoid intersections with other links by drawing
 arcs (engineering standard).
 - Improved interface with better support for XP themes.
 - Both regular and dockable windows stores their size and
 position, creating for user friendly environment.
 - Improved user interface of editing tables, indexes and
 relations. Added advanced, database specific and user
 defined properties.
 - Added context sensitive help file (partially under
 construction).

The following issues have been addressed by this version:
 - Problems with relations being randomly redirected and messed
 up.
 - Access violations when drawing objects containing not
 completely defined relations.
 - Problems generating drop index\create index SQL statements
 in some situations.

General Information About Context Database Designer
===================================================

Context Database Designer is a great tool for designing and
managing database schemas. It provides the full cycle of database
schema design and maintenance, including: creating of tables,
relations views and stored procedures; drawing of sophisticated
and professional looking diagrams; maintaining the history of
changes made to the database schema; allows to compare any two
versions of any two schemas, view the difference and instantly
build upgrade SQL script for any given database engine.

Context Database Designer does what very few professional and
expensive tools can - it is able to automatically generate
create/alter/drop DDL scripts for virtually any database engine.
It also is able to import SQL DDL scripts for any database
engine, which is accomplished by highly customizable SQL
generator/parser - a unique piece of software, developed by
Contexts Software. The only thing required in order to support
another database engine is to create a simple text profile (see
them stored under 'dbdefs' folder), defining a way to input and
output SQL scripts for that particular type of database.

The main diagramming features of Context Database Designer are:
  - Professional looking diagram view with several ways of
    displaying fields and relations;
  - Virtually unlimited Undo/Redo stack;
  - Smart connectors handling, tracking links intersections;
  - Multi-selection;
  - Copy/paste, including pasting as enhanced metafile to any
    text editor, like Word, for documenting;
  - Simple HTML markup in text labels;
  - Multiple diagrams can be created for the same schema;
  - Automatically laying out large diagrams into smaller pages
    for printing, (with account for gutter) with ability to select
    which pages to print;
  - Drag & drop tables and relations from schema tree view;
  - Draw tables and relations directly on a diagram;
  - Stored diagrams and schema within one file;
  - Import/Export diagram and schema from/to XML.

The main schema related features of Context Database Designer are:
  - Supports many types of schema objects, like: tables, indexes,
    views, triggers, stored procedures/functions, domains,
    sequences/generators;
  - Maintains history of changes done to schema via Checkpoints;
  - Allows to revert to any checkpoint, compare checkpoints and
    drop/purge old checkpoints to save disk space;
  - Automatically creates SQL scripts, that updates database from
    one version to the next;
  - Supports custom (user defined & engine specific) fields, with
    ability to customize their property editors (validation and lookups);
  - Generates any type of SQL scripts from completely custom
    database profile (stored as *.dbp file under 'dbdefs' folder);
  - Compensates for luck of DDL features in some engines (like inbility
    to rename a field or a table) by automatically generating more
    complex scripts, involving recreating & copying tables;
  - Powerfull comparison tool, allows to compare any two versions of
    any two schemas, show every property, that differs and instantly
    automatically creates SQL upgrade script for any engine;
  - Imports schema from sql database creation scripts, including
    importing of CREATE/ALTER and DROP statements, domains,
    stored procedures and functions, triggers, constraints, indexes,
    etc.;
  - Uses same profile for import and export of SQL. This allows
    fine-tuning of import/export features.
  - Allows to execute any SQL command towards any of registered
    databases. As a standalone application, Context Database Designer
    supports BDE & ODBC database access. When run from IDE, it can
    support any database via DBX, ADO or Interbase access objects and
    also custom databases, like DBISAM & Nexus;
  - Registers as a component editor for TDatabaseSchema component
    from our Database Extensions Suite, which puts all this power
    right under developers fingertips.

We believe, that these features make Context Database Designer one of
the most powerfull, flexible and feature-rich tools available on the
market today. We highly appreciate your comments and suggestions that
will enable us to make it even better and more accessible for all
database developers.

Fully functional trial version (with part of source
code included) is available at:
http://www.contextsoft.com/products/dbdesign/downloads.jsp

For more details, please go to
http://www.contextsoft.com/products/dbdesign
and refer to the included help files, demos and screenshots.


Best regards,
Michael Baytalsky
e-mail: mike@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
http://www.contextsoft.com
.

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