Hecate

Hecate is a tool to extract the history of relational database schema.

The input needed is a folder with the snapshots of the DDL files that include the CREATE TABLE statements of the databases. The output is the extraction of transitions from one snapshot ("version") to its next, along with statistics on the types of changes.

Usage

Use the jar's of the target folder. Specifically:

• HecateRunable is the jar that executes the Hecate.java with the GUI

  • You can either compare two SQL files, or,
  • Extract the history of an entire folder 9and see the metrics too)

• HecateFolderProcessing is a jar for parsing an entire folder from the command line, without the GUI

  • Assume you have the project PRJ its should contain a folder PRJ/schemata with the schema history.
  • You should pass the PRJ/schemata as the parameter needed at args[0]

License

See the copyright file.

Credits and history

v.05 [2020-07]

Improvements on parser, exception catching and error output in /results folder

• Savvas Kostoudas

v.04 [2019-06]

Refactoring of back-end to have an API, client for cmd-line invocation, new stats for tables.

• Panos Vassiliadis

v.03 [2017]

Gang of 3 refactors Hecate with cleanups and restructuring (esp. metrics)

• Nikos Koufos
• Thanos Pappas
• Michalis Sotiriou

v.01, v.02 [2013]

• Ioannis Skoulis creates the first version of Hecate.

ToDo

Refactorings and improvements

• Refactor the IHecateBackEndEngine interface. Too inclusive, to allow the DiffWorker of the GUI to incrementally report on its progress. Extract a small, tight mama interface (mainly for folder processing) and keep the current one for the GUI
• Once this is done, consider merging intermediate steps in the GUI, to restrict the necessary method calls

Extensions

• More stats as metrics
• Detect renamings as a first class citizen (SMO) operator