Thanks For Color-Coding, Now Next Mega-Useful Wish… :-)

[Sohodojo_Jim]

Hello SQLyogis from the 'Heartland'*,

(* The Heartland is what we call the central part of the USA. I'm in Cedar Rapids, Iowa to be specific.)

First and foremost, my most heart-felt thanks and appreciation for the color-coding of tabs and the Object Browser panel which was one of my most wished-for feature requests. As I imagined, it has made all the difference in the world in terms of allowing me to do my development work at 'full speed ahead' with a visual cue telling me what I was doing rather than having to stop and make sure.

Now, here's a not-as-big-a-deal but complementary feature request… 'Parameterized Quick Dump' also known as PQD.

• It has a shortcut key to be quick and easy to do.
• You already remember the directory where SQL dumps are done so just keep using that as the default PQD location.
• Provide a Preferences group within the Advanced panel that let's you specify the filename of the Quick Dump file.
• Tokens (among whatever you decide) would include %dbname%, %date% (or a date-style format string), %numsequence%, %alphasequence%, etc.
• So if you fill your PDQ preference in with '%dbname%_%date%%alphasequence% would dump the 'test' database as, e.g. 'test_10292010a.sql'

I know this is not as big of a deal as the much-appreciated UI color-coding, but it would sure help me keep me safe from myself when I am working fast. Being able to hit a shortcut key and quick dump the database I am actively in at the moment would be super useful.

Thanks for considering and keep up the GREAT work as usual,

–Sohodojo Jim–

http://www.Sohodojo.com

http://www.Sohodojo.biz

http://www.DropaBalm.com, etc.

[peterlaursen]

I tried to google on 'Parameterized Quick Dump' and 'PQD' but found nothing relevant for this discussion (and I know nothing in advance).  Could you provide some reference, please?

[Sohodojo_Jim]

'peterlaursen' wrote:

I tried to google on 'Parameterized Quick Dump' and 'PQD' but found nothing relevant for this discussion (and I know nothing in advance).  Could you provide some reference, please?

Hi Peter,

Sorry for the delayed reply… I am dropping by to comment and thank you folks — and add a feature request for — for the great new Form view.

'PQD' (Parameterized Quick Dump) is not something that currently exists (AFAIK) but rather a hypothetical/suggested name for the feature I am requesting. So I am not surprised that Google did not turn up anything for your search… at least not until now when a quick check showed that this thread is now at the number two spot for a search on 'Parameterized Quick Dump'! 🙂

Something like this 'remember a tokenized file save' feature is relatively common in applications such as hard drive backup applications.

You folks currently do something very close to 'PQD' with the Scheduled Backups feature. There is the task/job's archive file name and you can prefix a datetime stamp.

However, I believe _scheduled_ backups are much more useful to admins working on a routine rather than developers who are, to use a metaphor, 'walking the bleeding edge' of creating and breaking the state of things between the database and the application they are developing. So, for me, I get a LOT of 'safety net' help from SQLyog by having a work-habit of using the 'Copy database to a different database/host' feature. The speed and convenience of this great SQLyog feature keeps me from hurting myself many times a day, I am sure.

The proposed 'PQD' feature would be a complement to this. That is, PQD would allow developers to 'on-demand' dump a database to file rather than between database/hosts. If PQD was available, I could just do a keyboard shortcut keystroke, hit Enter at a confirming dialog and, “Bam!” I've got a DB dump of that database in my specified location using the naming convention I set. The key idea here is 'on-demand for developers' rather than 'scheduled for admins'. Using such a parameterized approach would allow this on-demand feature to work for _any_ selected database without having to change the PQD settings.

In short, the key to this feature request is: 1) file-naming tokens to make pattern-based dump files easy to specify, and 2) a simple 'set and forget it' preferences feature to specify the file-naming pattern, archive folder location, and shortcut keystroke to do it… and that's about it, I think.

Thanks, as always, for listening to your customers and making such great products. Keep up the good work as it is greatly appreciated.

–Sohodojo Jim–

http://www.Sohodojo.com (R&D)

http://www.Sohodojo.biz (Services)

http://www.DropaBalm.com (new venture in process)

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