Lazarus Object Builder 0.10 review

Object Builder is a tool I wrote to make building and maintaining CeaMuS easier

License: Freeware File size: 28K Developer: Clay Dowling

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Object Builder is a tool I wrote to make building and maintaining CeaMuS easier. I stole the idea (but not the code, which is in another language) wholesale from a tool that I wrote to manage the task of making data objects for an enterprise management system.

Object Builder project is a generic, language-neutral implementation of the Active Record software design pattern. Given a database, Object Builder tools will extract the schema to a generic form, then transform that schema into application code to manipulate database records.

If the phrase Active Record sounds familiar, but you don't seem to recall it from any of your computer science courses and it doesn't show up anywhere in Erich Gamma et. al.'s Design Patterns, it's because you've heard it from the Ruby On Rails crowd. According to its proponents Active Record is what makes Ruby on Rails the best thing since buttered toast (to be fair, there are other advantages; a lot of people seem to like to work in Ruby).

Funny thing is, I've been using this design pattern for several years now, long before I ever heard of Active Record or Ruby on Rails. Not that it makes me special. That's what design patterns are: a lot of people come up with a similar way of solving the same problem, so somebody sticks a label on it and we've got a new design pattern. The Ruby On Rails people just had the good sense to get their name behind it.

Object Builder is a great way to make sure that your application code is always in synch with your database schema. Because it's made of command line tools, it's easy to incorporate it into your build process.

If your application only has a couple of tables, Object Builder might be overkill. If you have half a dozen tables or more though, and you make changes from time to time, Object Builder can make your life a lot easier by incorporating those changes into code automatically.