The Data Browser

The DB Browser pane is used for displaying the database table, view and stored-procedure objects of the currently active connection (see Figure 1.4). To display a particular connection’s objects in the DB Browser, the user may double-click on that connection’s node in the Connections pane. This will update (or refresh) the DB Browser displaying the database object structure.


Figure 1.4. Showing the DB Browser

Essentially, there are the Tables, Views and Stored Procedures folders under the database root folder in the DB Browser pane. The Tables folder will contain the table objects of the database, with each table object node containing the fields as child nodes. Similarly, the Views folder will contain the view objects of the database, with each view object node containing the fields as child node. These objects may be drag-dropped into the Relations pane, where further field relation manipulations may be performed.

The Stored Procedures folder will contain the stored procedures of the database, with each stored procedure object node containing the arguments and return data types as child nodes. These stored procedures may not be drag-dropped into the Relations pane, and they preliminarily serve the user to display structural information about the stored procedure.

In addition to the structural information about the fields and arguments of the objects displayed in the DB Browser, we can also obtain detailed information about these objects via the Get Details menu item of the popup menu on the DB Browser pane. In fact, the Get Details command will display the database script via a textbox window for any selected object in the DB Browser pane. This Get Details function makes the DB Browser a very powerful data view tool generating object scripts much more quickly and efficiently than, for example, the MS-SQL Server script generator.