Introduction

The Features document gives a more detailed view of exactly what is possible with the Darrt library, but this may be more useful to give a flavour of how you might like to employ Darrt.

Package the database component of an application as simply as you can the logic components.

Sometime every project has to move from development into testing and production and when this happens a myriad of data structures and reference data has to be packaged up and deployed into the new data server. Ask anyone who has tried this about the experience and they will probably either turn pale or proudly tel you how simple their own set of shell and make scripts make the task.

We quietly hope that Darrt will simplify the task dramatically in several ways:

  • Decouple export of data and creation of a new database. You can tweak the exported items as much or as little as necessary before packaging the final item for deployment.
  • Darrt tools allow you to create the DAR file automatically or from your own files for greater flexibility.
  • Once packaged as a DAR file, the Darrt library does all the installation. There is no need to worry about whether the start to with an empty database and load data after with scripts or figure out how to migrate the data in situ, Darrt can figure out exactly what is required by interrogating the target database.

Install upgrades as easily as creating green-field sites from scratch.

New sites can be rapidly brought online because the DAR file, together with the Darrt libraries c an be deployed right within your J2EE Enterprise Archive. A servlet or Struts plugin can be used to load the DAR automatically on server start - the DAR will ensure the schema and data are always configured correctly.

Alternately use the Darrt tools to perform one off migrations in isolation from any applications runnning against the database.

Development and Runtime documentation and analysis.

Create reports on the state of your databases at any given time.

Report on differences between databases even when they are running different RDBMS.