In order to create and alter your database objects like Tables, Views, Triggers etc, Database Workbench has specialized Object Editors (more information about each type of editor can be found here). These editors can be reached via the Editors toolbar, or the main menu Editors | <object editor name>, or the Database Navigator by double clicking (or the context menu) any object or double clicking any object folder (like Tables) in the treeview.
The Editors Toolbar
The small arrows besides the buttons let you select a previously opened editor. The current active editor is shown in bold in these menus. The default action of the buttons is to create a new object editor.
All object editors have a similar layout:
Example Object Editor - in this case, a Firebird Trigger Editor
All object-editors have the "object selection" drop down boxes that list all objects (of a type the editor understands) in your database. These drop down boxes include a filter box. In the above example, you can see that Triggers are "sub-objects" of tables and views. In the case of sub-objects, you have two selection boxes and the first one always lists the "parent-objects" like Tables.
There's also a toolbar with several buttons - the minimum amount of buttons is always a New, Create/Alter, Drop and Extract DDL button. The New button creates a new object for you, that won't be saved into your database until you use the Create/Alter button. That goes for any change - nothing will be saved unless you tell Database Workbench to do so.
Editor Tabs
The first tab holds the object details, some times, there's a second tab called Options.
For objects and database engines that support it, there's a tab called Description where you can view and edit a user written description of the object. |
For objects and database engines that support it, the Permissions tabs shows "grants" for the object, users and/or objects that have permission to use the selected object. You can click the cells to modify the grants, see the Grant Manager topic for information on grant states.
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Each editor has a tab DDL that holds the meta data statement(s) to create or alter the object. You can copy the statement from here if you like.
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If the object and database engine supports it, the editor also has a tab Dependencies listing any other database objects that explicitly or implicitly (via Foreign Key Constraints, for example) depend on this object to exist. Filter boxes are available.
Example Dependencies tab for a Table
As you can see in the above screen shot, this table depends on a domain and another tables and there are Views, Stored Procedures, Triggers and Constraints that depend on this table. |
The To-Do tab shows a To-Do list for the selected object, you can add, remove or "finish" items here, don't forget there's also a window with all To-Do lists of all items in the database.
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For tables, views and stored routines, there's a Data or Results tab, which either shows the table or view data or executes the routine and shows the results (which can be a data set) to you.
On a table or view Data tab you can also edit, print or export the data.
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