ORM Designer

Here is a tool that might help you with your MVC framework, like CakePHP, Symfony, and others – ORM Designer.  In essence, it is a graphical user interface for drawing a visual representation of your project (such as an Entity Relationship Diagram (ERD)) and than converting it into the code.  You can specify which framework and which  ORM you want to use and it will generate the appropriate bits and pieces.  What’s even more interesting is that it has import functionality, which means that you can start using it with an existing project.  Here is the video that shows and explains more.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FNlmU6zX5Ug]

Of course, I got excited about it, downloaded and installed.   Two things that disappointed me were:

  1. It’s a native Windows application, which runs on Linux through the wine emulator.  While it works fine, I’d much prefer a native application that I could integrate with the rest of my development environment.
  2. CakePHP import is not supported at this time.

Other than that though, it looks very promising.  I’ve seen quite a few applications that help with database design, and ORM Designer stands well in that row.  You can create entities, define fields, specify indexes, and associate entities with each other using relationships.  Many-to-many relationships are supported, as are entity inheritance.  While inheritance does make it for a bit more complicated structure of the project (with app/models/base/ folder for CakePHP), it’s very nice to have such support for bigger, more complex projects.

The project is commercial, with a 14 days evaluation version available for download. If you like it enough to buy, the price is very reasonable – 99 EUR per license.

Try and see if you like it, and provide some feedback to the guys who are developing it.  ORM Designer has all the chances of becoming an extremely useful tool and since it is still in its early development, your feedback would be of the most value.

Amazon charges WiFi Kindle users for 3G roaming via books

As per this post over at Download Squad, it seems that Amazon is charging all international Kindle users, including WiFi-only Kindle owners for 3G roaming, using their book prices.

I decided to start with the classics – for example, Moby Dick. Yes, I know it’s available for free online, but this edition is typeset for the Kindle so I figured it must be worth the modest sum Amazon asks for it ($2.95, as you see in the screenshot above).

When I sent the link to my friend, who has an Amazon account with a Canadian billing address, we were amazed to discover that Amazon list the same exact item at $0.95 when she’s looking at it.

[…]

The rep said, “yes, I understand it is WiFi only, but there are roaming charges because AT&T is the service provider”. Upon which I proceeded to explain yet again that I do not have a 3G chip in my device, physically. This intelligent exchange went on for a few minutes, until I finally asked to speak to her manager.

Upon getting the team leader, he basically told me the same thing. I would be required to pay for a roaming charge, even though Amazon advertises its 3G as free and that my device is WiFi only.

I then emailed them to kindle-feedback@amazon.com, and got the same exact reply.

Now that’s pretty silly on the Amazon part.  But being the smart guys as they are, I’m sure they will notice and fix the issue soon.  Let me know if you hear of any developments in this area.  (Yes, I am planning to get myself the Amazon Kindle)

Day in brief