tedia2sql Troubleshooting Guide

Murphy's Law

It is very unlikely that your first attempt at creating a Dia UML diagram that will parse correctly into SQL DDL will be successful. You will have a couple of Associations that appear to connect Classes, but in fact don't, or you will have named two Associations the same thing, or you will have checked the "Abstract" checkbox for a Class that is not to be a view, but a table.

Whatever the reason, there are a couple of things you can do to figure out the problem.

Verbosity -- When tedia2sql Dies

Verbosity is your friend. Pass the -v 1 option to tedia2sql when running your script. It will tell you which Class, Association, SmallPackage, or other Dia object it's attempting to parse.

Using this output, you'll know which object tedia2sql bombed out on, and you can fix it.

For example, if you forget to attach both ends of an Association to Classes, tedia2sql complains (somewhat cryptically):

Can't call method "getAttribute" on an undefined value....

Running the script with -v 1 shows the following:

generateAssociationSQL(): Parsing UML Association id=O17
Got NAME=fk_iaac
Can't call method "getAttribute" on an undefined value....

Aha! We now know that generateAssociationSQL() died, and the name of the Association was fk_iaac. Thus, find your fk_iaac and see if something is wrong with it (like, say, one end isn't attached to a Class).

SQL Errors -- When the SQL DDL Won't Compile

This is an area that's a little more grey. Find the error and determine if it's because you made a typo or if tedia2sql has generated some faulty SQL. Running tedia2sql with the -v 2 option might generate a little insight into the problem as well.

If it is truly a misfeature with tedia2sql, where it generates invalid SQL DDL, please contact me via the project homepage (at Tigris dot Org) so that I can look into it. Alternatively, fix the problem and send a patch.

A couple of possibilities as to why tedia2sql created invalid SQL that are really your fault :-)...

You made the Class "Abstract" indicating this should be a view, but otherwise you tried to create a table. This causes tedia2sql to create a view with column datatypes and primary key clauses, etc. (Bad) Also, the converse.
You tried to make a column "NOT NULL" but used mixed-case (ie: "not NULL" or "Not Null") in the value field.
You forgot an "and" or "or" in your view where clause.
You named the end of an Association an Attribute name that doesn't exist in the Class.
You named two Associations or indexes the same thing.
You misspelled or malformed a datatype, eg: "varchar (24" or "timespamp". In the first instance, you forgot your right paren, in the second, the first "p" should be a "t".