flyspeed looks great but any chance of adding these interface features?

D Rosen

8 years ago
updated 5 years ago
Completed

Flyspeed looks terrific and I would definitely buy it if it had some of these user interface features (some of which I've seen in Sqleo and/or IBM Data Studio):

1. In the query structure tree pane, when we click on a subquery item within the FROM of the main query, please show that subquery's diagram and highlight the subquery structure down below -- don't make us go down below and find the subquery structure itself just to show it on the canvas.

2. Better yet, show the subquery substructure right there within the tree of the main query, not just as separate named items after the main query as if it were a reusable common table expression.

3. Let us edit text of a subquery by clicking (or right-clicking) on it in the structure pane or in the diagram canvas or within the sql text itself, not just using the separate sub-query edit mode dropdown.

4. In the structure tree pane allow us to right-click and add/change things to the structure right there, not just in the diagram canvas.

5. Also in the structure tree, include nodes for the rest of the sql clauses such as WHERE, GROUP BY, HAVING, and ORDER BY, so it's a full representation of the query and not just the high-level "FROM" (and FIELD) structure.

6. When saving the query as a .sql file, include the tables' positions in the diagram as comments in the sql (like Sqleo does) so it can be read back in and the diagram structure isn't lost. This would allow full round-trip into other sql tools.

7. Preserve comments in the sql text (like IBM Data Studio does).

8. Don't raise the price (much) when adding those features :-)

To be clear, I'm *not* saying that Sqleo (open source) or Data Studio are better than FlySpeed -- on the contrary they have their own limitations. For starters, Sqleo's development is frozen in an incomplete state (it doesn't even support UNION ALL and some other important sql features). IBM Data Studio is free but db2-only, hasn't been updated very recently, etc.

FlySpeed seems quite complete and mature (and reasonably-priced), but I feel that it could be much more intuitive to use if it had some of the features mentioned above.

Best of luck!

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Anonymous

8 years ago

Hello, D.

Thank you very much for your suggestions.

We have just added the suggestions 1-3 to our to-do list, as they seem to be useful and relatively easy to implement.

The fourth suggestion is not clear: "In the structure tree pane allow us to right-click and add/change things to the structure right there, not just in the diagram canvas." -- What exactly you want to be able to do there?

6. We are saving the query with the layout but in a different format.

7. Preservation of comments is present in our to-do list since the very beginning. Hopefully, we'll be able to do this till the end of this year.

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Sounds great -- thanks for your quick response.

For #4, I suggest running Sqleo to see what you can do in a context menu in their structure tree. For example right-click on "FIELDS" (which Sqleo calls "SELECT" because they are reproducing the query in that tree as in my #5) and you can "add expression" or even "add subquery" as an additional field to the field list. Right-click on an individual field and you can "add to group-by", "add to order-by", "edit..." (change its alias or the text if it is an expression -- they don't even have your separate list of fields below the diagram canvas because this information is all right there in the structure tree in the field list and in the conditions), or "remove". Right-click on "FROM" and you can "add subquery" as one of its "tables". Right-click on such a subquery, or any query, and you can change it to a UNION with an additional table/subquery. (And, because they include the entire query in that tree as in my #5, there are also context menus for the WHERE and HAVING nodes so you can add conditions under them, and on the individual conditions themselves so you can edit or remove them.)

For #6, I hope we can save it as a native sql file with each table's position/size/state in sql comments (like Sqleo). This would make the product more appealing because we could send the sql to someone else who could edit the sql by hand or in their own tools and when they send it back to us we haven't completely lost our layout. Also if we ourselves use Flyspeed to develop sql code that must be exported and run in a different environment where we can't use Flyspeed to directly query the database, but where we sometimes need to make a change to it on the fly, we can round-trip it back into Flyspeed without losing our layout...

Alandsman

5 years ago

Hi.

Was looking to see if it's possible to prevent comment removal when automatically formatting. Couldn't find the setting in SQL Query 3.7.7.5. Searched the forums and this thread appears to be the only pertinent result.

It's been 2 years; has this functionality been introduced (and I'm just not seeing it)?