Autotabla is a program that automates the maintenance of a set of SQL tables. The program reads the database schema from a configuration file, and you can manage the tables included in the schema seamlessly and easily: you can add, delete or modify rows and you can do simple but effective queries.
The main purpose is to help developers who are making SQL based applications, freeing them from the burden of writing basic scripts for accesing the tables the application will use, and allowing them to test those applications with live data that you can insert, modify or delete from outside it.
Autotabla is a CGI program, so it needs a web server to run (it's developed under Apache, but any server which can run CGI scripts will do fine). This also means that in order to use it, you must use some kind of web browser (Mozilla and Links work ok, but others should, too.)
It reads the database schema from an XML configuration file (which must be provided; examples are included in the distribution, together with the documentation), and presents an index page of tables and operations to do with them. From that page on, all typical table maintenance can be done.
Some very useful features are implemented, such as Foreign Key support: some fields may be defined as foreign keys (relations to other tables' primary keys), and a "visible" field associated, such that when a query is made, the "visible" field from the referenced table is displayed instead of the original foreign key field.
For a detailed description of how it works, please consult the documentation that comes with the distribution.
There is a project homepage at SourceForge, which is what you're probably reading ;-D.
You can also access the project's details, and here is a link to the downloads page.
Simple: send an email to jorgegv@users.sourceforge.net. I usually check my mail daily and this is my first Free Software Project, so my interest in it is high and you'll get a quick response.
I'm really interested in hearing about the use of this program, so if you're using it, I'd be grateful if you sent me a few lines explaining what are you using it for, comments, bugfixes, suggestions for improvements, or anything you'd consider interesting about it.
Of course, all patches are welcome.
Autotabla is a by-product of another project of mine, which happens to be based on an SQL database (as lots of projects are, nowadays). I needed a comfortable way of adding/deleting/modifying/querying records into the project's tables, so I started this little subproject to handle that, with the purpose of being able to reuse it.
When you're developing something interesting, SQL table maintenance is really a PITA, so I badly needed something like this little program. And it sounded like the right excuse to start my first public GPL project, so here we are... ;-D
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