Context Database Designer does what very few professional and very expensive tools can - it is able to automatically generate create/alter/drop DDL scripts for virtually any database engine. Moreover, it also is able to import SQL DDL scripts from virtually any database engine, which is accomplished by highly customizable SQL generator/parser - a unique component, developed by Contexts Software. The only thing required in order to support another database engine is creating a simple text profile, which defines the specifics of SQL scripts for that particular type of database.

When developing an RDBMS using Context Database Designer you

Design and connect tables right on the diagram canvas.
Create a version checkpoint, that automatically produces SQL DDL script for your target database engine.
Use the script to create a new database.
Continue to design and modify your schema, each time producing a new version checkpoint with update script.
Apply updates to your development, stage and production databases.
In most cases, when using the above sequence, you will almost never need to write or run DDL scripts manually and the whole history of your database design process will be beautifully documented in diagrams and version checkpoints (which you will always be able to compare and revert to if necessary).

Features
Professional looking diagram view with several ways of displaying fields and relations
Virtually unlimited Undo/Redo stack
Smart connectors handling
Multi-selection
Copy/paste, including pasting as enhanced metafile to any text editor, like Word, for documenting
Simple HTML markup in text labels
Multiple diagrams can be created for the same schema
Automatically laying out large diagrams into smaller pages for printing, (with account for gutter) with ability to select which pages to print
Drag & drop tables and relations from schema tree view
Draw tables and relations directly on a diagram
Stored diagrams and schema within one file
Import/Export diagram and schema from/to XML
We believe, that these features make Context Database Designer one of the most powerfull, flexible and feature-rich tools available on the market today. We highly appreciate your comments and suggestions that will enable us to make it even better and more accessible for all database developers. Trial version of Context Database Designer is available now for free download. If you need more information about this product, please click here to submit your request.

Supported databases
Absolute Database
DB2
DBISAM v3 & v4
ElevateDB v1 & v2
Firebird v1.5, v2.0, v2.1 & v2.5
Interbase 2009
Mimer 9
MS Access
MS SQL 2000, 2005 & 2008
MySQL 4 & 5
Nexus 1, 2 & 3
Oracle (since 8)
Paradox
PostgreSQL
SQLite
Sybase

Why do we need extensions?
Here, at Contexts Software, we've been developing all sorts of database applications since the beginning of Delphi days, and while VCL may be regarded as one of the best database components library, since its conception it was lacking in several important areas.

The absence of standard memory data storage prompted the appearance of a number of 3rd party memory datasets.
Cached updates were only avaiable within heigher versions of Delphi and were lacking functions, especially when it cames to updating several datasets at once.
There has never been a uniform way of working with different database access components. Every time we used different library, we had to replace components on all our data modules and forms.
Some of the simple use cases like having a single record datasets or be able to easlity show enumeration values descriptions in dataset fields were not supported.
There has never been a place where a developer could store the database structure to use in, say, custom reporting and/or filtering.
There was no way to track if the actual database, that we connect to, has all the udpates applied and is compatible with the current version of the program.
There were to tools that would allow to quickly and correctly reverse engineer a database or an SQL DDL script.
These and lots of other issues prompted us to write our components, in most cases extending and commonizing (via the use of Interfaces) existing database access libraries.

After more than 10 years of development we are happy to present you with the set of components that addresses all of the above issues and more.

What's inside the package?
TDatabaseSchema - persistent storage for database schema definitions, including tables, indexes, RI constraints, triggers and incremental database version updates. It can be imported from DSD file produced by our Context Database Designer.
TDBSequence - implements generic sequences, that could be used as unque key generators (similar to Oracle's sequences). It is database independant and uses external SequenceTable (which could be any TDataSet descendant) to access a table, where each sequence must have a corresponding field.
TDBRecord - a simple TDataSet descendant, that represents a dataset with only one record of data. This component is usefull when implementing forms, using only data-aware controls.
TDBEnumeration, TDBSchemaEnum - enumerations are very much like enumerations defined in Pascal or C. Enumerations are very helpful, when you need to specify a set of limited choices (Order Statuses, User Types, etc.). Enumerations defined within database schema may be exposed using TDBEnumeration component, derived from TDataSet, allowing to produce simple lookup fields, that will display the full name or description of each value.
TDBEngineProfile - contains definitions for a particular type of database (e.g. MySQL, MS SQL, Oracle, Firebird, etc.), and allow to produce and reverse engineer database-specific SQL scripts. Many profiles come with our Context Database Designer product.
TCtxDataContainer - contains in-memory data tables, which could have PK, NOT NULL and RI constraints defined. Allows to work on a consistent snapshot of information (say, database object, like "Invoice") on a client side and then save it to the database (or disk file) all at once.
TCtxDataSet - TDataSet-descendand that works like a cursor on an in-memory data table contained in TCtxDataContainer. It could also work as a memory table on its own, without a container.
TCtxDBAdapter - stores SQL commands (typically CRUD) required to load, refresh and save data from and to the database connection. Uses data provider component, which could be any component, implementing ICtxDataProvider interface. This allows to isolate SQL from programming code.
TADOConnectionExt - a replacement for the standard TADOConnection component. It is extended to implement functionality required to support schema operations and cached updates. As all database access components implements ICtxDataProvider interface, which is required to execute commands, stored in TCtxDBAdapter. Additional adapters pack contains replacements of many other database access components (see below).
TCtxDataSetProvider - a basic implementation of ICtxDataProvider interface that adapts any TDataSet-descendand and could be used to fill TCtxDataContainer from any dataset.

Supported database access libraries

As of right now it supports and extends the following database access libraries:

BDE/ODBC
ADO
IBX
FIBPlus
DBX
DBISAM
ElevateDB
Nexus
AnyDAC
Absolute Database
MyDAC (by CoreLab)
SQLite
However, even if you're not using any of the above libraries, you could still benefit from the advanced set of components and features that Context Database Extensions provides. You may also implement (or ask us to do so) our interfaces for the database access library of your choice and get access to the functionality that, we believe, required by most database applications.



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