Convertor and Sync & Convert Wizard Comparison - I
Thursday, August 27th, 2009Hello all Toad Data Modeler users,
As you may have noticed, the new version 3.4.14 has brought a perfectly new wizard – the Sync & Convert Wizard.
This wizard has replaced the Convertor dialog that allowed you to compare and merge models, generate alter scripts and generate alter reports. All these operations are now available in the wizard too, so, this hasn’t changed. However, there are many other significant changes that you have definitely noticed and which, we hope, you like.
In this series, I’d like to compare the new Sync & Convert Wizard with the old Convertor, show you the differences and emphasize the advantages of the changes we made.
Let’s start with two most discussed functionalities that were available in Convertor but are not available in the new wizard.
Convertor
1. It was one dialog (one form) for all the actions.
It might have appeared as advantage but in reality it was a bit different as we learned from your feedback with which we had to agree finally. The Convertor form was not intuitive, but complicated and confusing. Your feedback was clear: You prefer a better GUI to a powerful but hard to understand functionality.
2. Model comparison and merge of different database platform was possible.
Again, it may have sounded like a great thing. The reality was different. There are many differences between databases - different types of objects, constructions that are possible in one database are not possible in another database etc. Unfortunately, via the Convertor form we were not able to care for all the exceptions, which sometimes resulted in inconsistent final model (after model merge).
Your feedback was clear: You prefer a stable and clear solution with less functions to unstable Convertor with many functions.
So, as we always listen to advice and requirements of our users, we have come up with the new Sync & Convert Wizard.
We changed the GUI, partially re-wrote the code that handles generation of alter scripts in order to make this feature more stable, and improved the performance.
The new Sync & Convert wizard is now more user-friendly, clearer, faster and easier to use and understand. However, simplification of the GUI has brought some limitations.
Limitations of the new Sync & Convert Wizard
• If you want to perform two actions, e.g. update a model and also generate alter script, you have to use the wizard twice.
• If you want to compare two models of a different database platform, you have to do model conversion first and then you can compare the two models, now of the same database platform.
• If you want to compare a logical model with physical model, you have to convert the model to physical (or logical) and then compare two logical or two physical models.
We believe that in these cases, it is not a problem to use the available solutions (or workarounds if you want).
At the moment we do not plan to implement the functionality of model comparison of different db platforms back. We definitely agree with you – we’d rather work with a stable and clear wizard with less functions than with unstable and complicated Convertor with many functions.
Next time we will go through standard scenarios and compare the old Convertor dialog with the new Sync & Convert Wizard.
If you have any comments or questions, please do not hesitate to write us – here or post a new thread to the Modeling community forum.
Regards,
Vladka + Vaclav