Re: How to name inline constraints using Designer 2000

Simon wrote:
>
> You are right, it's not possible. This is a failing of Designer, in my
> opinion, as it forces you to move the definition of allowable values
> which are part of your business rule set down to the detailed design
> level of the data-diagrammer.
>
> I've only found two ways wound this - one is to use the CHECK
> constraint defined on the table specified using the data diagrammer,
> the other is to generate the DDL anyway, and then edit the in-line
> constraint definitions to give them a meaningful name.
>
> I prefer the latter, as it enables me to keep the allowable values in
> at the ERD level! However, if you have many allowable value sets
> defined, you might find this a bit of a pain :-)

Thank you for the confirmation of my suspicions... Yes, we do have MANY allowable value sets (we have MANY tables!). This is a pretty big shortcoming of the tool.

There are several reasons that I would like to have these constraints named. A big issue that is biting me right now as a result of this deficiency is how to compare if two databases are in synch? We use (and I am sure that many others do) a test and production database environment. There are occassions that we need to be sure that tables within these databases are structurally identical (same storage params, table level constraints, column constraints, etc). Since the column level constraints do not get named by the Designer 2000 tool, this comparison is extremely tedious!

John Elliott
elliotjs_at_dmdcwest.fmp.osd.mil Received on Fri Nov 29 1996 - 00:00:00 CET