Overview of Database Plug-Ins

Database plug-ins enhance the capability of WinSQL Professional. Since ODBC is a generic API, it does not support database-specific functions. Most of this functionality is achieved by querying system tables (also known as the system catalog) in the back-end database. Plug-ins provide the scripts for these queries, which are in plain text and XML formats.

XML is becoming the standard for configuration files and for storing small documents. Many programmers and system administrators are already familiar with its semantics and syntax. Therefore, WinSQL Professional uses XML to create plug-ins, which makes its’ editing very easy.

What do plug-ins provide?

The following features are provided by database plug-ins:

·Retrieving scripts for Views, Triggers, Stored procedures

·Generating DDL scripts for tables

·Database specific objects such as sequences, functions, rules, and check constraints

·Database specific syntax for creating indexes

·Configuration information from the server

How to select a plug-in

You select a plug-in when you first connect to the database, as depicted in the following image:

 

 

What happens when you do not select a plug-in?

Although selecting a plug-in is not required to run queries, selecting them significantly enhances the functionality of WinSQL Professional.

Consider the following images. The first image depicts WinSQL Professional connected to a Microsoft SQL Server database and using a plug-in:

The second image shows how the nodes in the tree are reduced when a generic plug-in is used:

Notice that you do not see any other node after Supported Data Types. This is because information for all other nodes comes in from the plug-in.

What if a plug-in is not available for your database?

If a plug-in is not available for your database, it does not mean that you cannot connect to a database. It means that some of the functionality will not be available.

There are two reasons why a plug-in is not available:

·You are connecting to a database for which a plug-in cannot be written. Examples of such databases are Microsoft Access, Microsoft Excel and text files.

·You are using a database that is either new or our engineers have not attempted to write a plug-in for it. Please note that our engineers are constantly working on creating new plug-ins for different databases. If you think a new plug-in should be created for the database you are working with, contact our support team and they will work with you to create a new plug-in.