Craig Stuntz’s Weblog

Martijn Tonies asked me if I wouldn’t mind plugging Database Workbench, and I’m happy to do so. I’ve used the product for several years, and overall I find it to be a good match for my needs.

Here are some things I like about the tool:

• The database metadata search is really nice, and seems reasonably fast. It picks up things that IB doesn’t keep as formal dependencies. When I need to see how a DB column is used, this is the tool I turn to first.
• The stored procedure syntax checker is quite useful, and is something I haven’t seen done well elsewhere. My experience with stored procedure debuggers for InterBase is that few of them work reliably enough to really depend upon since the InterBase server itself provides absolutely no support for this. But the DBW syntax checker looks for things like unused variables, quotes used incorrectly — things which aren’t errors per se but may still indicate problems with your proc code, like the "hints" in Delphi. I find it very useful when cleaning up old procs.
• The data generator, while not as fancy as Upscene’s Advanced Data Generator, gives me more than enough features to populate development databases. I wouldn’t want to be without this when developing new products.
• Martijn has always turned around bug fixes fairly quickly when I’ve reported problems with the product.
• There is always support for the latest version of InterBase, often within days of the IB releases.
• SevenSix different DB servers are supported, but you don’t have to pay for the ones you don’t need.
• Also, Martijn is very helpful in the InterBase newsgroups; I appreciate his support for the InterBase community.

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