Generating code based on data dictionary

Hi,

My client's software is suffering from being out of synch with the schema. This disease appears to be rampant across the system. Primarily, the problem appears to be in constants used to define the upper and lower bounds of columns in a table. This is used in an attempt to validate the data prior to expending energy to update a table with faulty data.

I suggested the client build a meta file from which one could generate both C++ definitions as well as SQL which would represent the schema.

This was not an acceptable solution as the schema is owned by another department not willing to participate in such an endeavor.

Alternatively, I suggested that the C++ definitions be generated from a perl and sqlplus script which interrogated the data dictionary and generated the C++ constants from this. I have been assured that the development database shall remain in sync with the production database.

Has anyone seen this done before and are there better ways of doing this?

Is there a system table in Oracle from which I could obtain information on the version of a table. Is there a system table from which I could determine when a table was CREATEd (e.g. DBO.DBA_OBJECT)? This information could be instrumental in generating the header file using make(1).

Please reply directly (remove ".nospamonme" from reply-to address), I will summarise should there be sufficient interest.

Cheers,
Nathan Banks
nathan_banks_at_consultant.com Received on Wed Jan 05 2000 - 00:00:00 CET