Description:
This will have a number of items in it stemming from my first foray into this tool. I'm an experienced data modeler with ERWin, a $4000+ product, so I'm jointly interested in seeing you all develop something that's usable and free or reasonably priced, so understand that's where I come from with these suggestions. I love what you've done so far, I just want to see this become a usable product!
Is there a way that you all could publish a quickie how-to guide (as small as possible with rudimentary navigation advice etc) with the basic capabilities that ARE included, so we in the user community don't report things that are part of the tool but for which there is no documentation to instruct how to do what we want to do? I think this small thing could save you all a BUNCH of bug reports!!
I'd like to see you first of all make more extensive use of standard windows functionality wherever possible, for example, the use of the right click context menu. For example, when I open the tool, I see that the head node of the Object Tree is called "test". I tried right-clicking on it to rename it but that didn't work. How can one rename the root node of the object tree to something useful?
Then I proceeded to create a small table, and I noticed that it forced me to create an "Id%table%" primary key column before it would allow me to create more columns underneath it. Actually, the table I was trying to create has its OWN primary key, so I'm not interested in having this "id" column first. Is there a way to circumvent this "feature?"
I see that someone already posted about the fact that column deletions aren't able to be made, but I think that only scratches the surface of problems with how this version of the software doesn't allow for modifications to be made to a table's column list. Granted, being able to delete columns IS critical to being a usable tool, but for example, there is no apparent way to reorder columns, nor is there a way to insert columns in any position but at the bottom. In other modeling tools, one is able to accomplish this by clicking on the column name and dragging it up or down in the list. Full column editing, reordering, deleting, and inserting capabilities are critical for the basic usefulness of any data modeling tool, especially as the size of tables increases. How about some basic "insert" and "delete" buttons in the column details dialog for creating a new column or deleting the column that is shown in the column details view?
Is there a way to resize the graphic image of the tables on the main view? If so I haven't figured out how to do it. All of my table and datatype descriptions are truncated off to the right with ... at the end, and I'd like to widen the size of the table so these can be readable.
Those are the issues I've run against now... I'm going to continue putting this tool through its paces and will let you know if there's other capabilities I believe should be a part of this tool... it's a great start guys, but there's a long way to go before this gets out of beta....
How to repeat:
1) Look for any basic documentation about SQLWorkbench on the MySQL site. None exists. Try opening the help screen within Workbench. Only an intro exists. Try clicking on the online documentation link within the Workbench help. You go into the main MySQL manual.
2) Try to change the name of the 'test' root object using right click - can't do it. No rename function.
3) Try changing the positions of column #4 with Column #3 by clicking on Column 4 and dragging to position #3. Doesn't work. Try deleting any column using delete key, using right click, or using ctrl-delete. All unable to do. No delete buttons in the advanced dialog. Try to insert a new column between two existing columns by pressing insert key or right clicking. Can't do this.
4) Try clicking on the table in main view. No sizing handles exist so that you can widen the table view to display all column names and datatypes without truncation. No double click capability that would automatically widen the table so that all data is displayed without truncation. No autosize feature on the right-click context menu. Don't know what the pencil, lock, and other icons on the bottom of the table mean because of #1
Suggested fix:
1) Put out a quick how-to guide ASAP and incorporate into the help system if you can. Most people won't be very patient without basic documentation if they can't get basic stuff to work, so you won't get much use or feedback about the tool without it.
2&3) In the next version, PLEASE try to make more use of the right-click context menu of windows to do common tasks like those I've mentioned above.
3) Allow a user the ability to resize the table diagram widths thru sizing handles, double-click auto-resize capability, a right-click context menu, or a combination of these ways.
