A few random thoughts.
## Integrations
If Modeler changed to another language or UI library, could it leverage
that to better integrate with other tooling?
For example, could making parts of the modeler a js library allow it to
work with existing js database modelers like Vertabelo
https://my.vertabelo.com/try-db-designer
Here are some desktop app database modelers I found:
* https://www.toadworld.com/products/toad-data-modeler
* https://www.mysql.com/products/workbench/
* https://www.idera.com/products/er-studio/enterprise-data-modeling
* https://sparxsystems.com/products/ea/
* https://astah.net/
## Building on an existing platform
Is it worth examining DBeaver to see whether Cayenne functionality could
be added on top of the existing ERD features?
https://dbeaver.com/docs/wiki/ER-Diagrams
What would be involved in making Cayenne modeler an Eclipse or Intellij
plugin? Would that increase market awareness, especially if the IDE
could be made more aware of how to handle Cayenne annotations.
## Competing implementations
It is worth looking at the feature set over here:
https://tools.jboss.org/features/hibernate.html#hibernate-console
I like the idea of converting a query into SQL in order to understand
what it is doing. But of course that needs a modeler which can talk to
the Java Cayenne library and might rule out a pure browser/js
implementation. Rather it might look like the Cayenne server library
with some sort of rest API to serve the front end. Cayenne as a service,
if you will.
## Browser/cloud modeler
A modeler which runs inside a browser reduces the barrier to entry
hugely. Imagine going to a demo website, uploading your database schema
and being able to instantly play with your schema and output a working
Java project.
## Developer skills
Does anyone in the existing team have js skills?
Ari
On 11/12/21 7:15pm, Andrus Adamchik wrote:
A datapoint to our perennial discussion of technology to use for the future
CayenneModeler... With Swing being old and crusty, and JavaFX no longer supported by
Oracle, perhaps we should be looking for something fresh. I just came across a new
"Compose Multiplatform" desktop UI framework by JetBrains [1]. It is programmed
in Kotlin and is based on Google toolkit for Android. Their GitHub examples [2] are not
that visually impressive, but I would imagine it is a matter of styling. A million $
question is whether it will be around and open source in 10-15 years.
Anyone knows anything about it?
Andrus
[1] https://www.jetbrains.com/lp/compose-mpp/
[2] https://github.com/JetBrains/compose-jb/blob/master/artwork/readme/apps.png
