About

What is Metadrone

Metadrone is a code generation tool powered by a simple template syntax to output text based upon a database schema.

The goal of this project is to help developers automate mundane programming and documentation efforts as much as possible by replacing repetitive manual typing with generated textual patterns. These patterns are just plain text that have certain elements changed according to an abstract model.

The idea is to reduce the manual coding of user interface screens, persistence layers, ORM mappings in frameworks, stored procedures, API classes, etc. This helps with employing Agile software development practices and giving you more confidence in altering your database model to changing software requirements.

Metadrone currently only supports database schemas as information models, but future plans will support UML.

This is completely free software. No trials, no sign-up, no licencing costs to use it. Metadrone can be used and distributed freely for private or commercial use.

If you require support for help, bug fixes, customisations, etc sign up here.

Overview

Code is generated based on a database connection. Select from a variety of databases such as SQL Server, MySQL, Oracle, or PostgreSQL.

Using a template, craft what the output will be based on the database schema objects such as tables, columns, views, or stored procedures.

Hit ‘Build’ to generate code.

This example demonstrates generation of SQL statements for creating stored procedures. Here the output file is opened in SQL Management Studio illustrating how columns match with the generated output:

System Requirements

Metadrone uses ICSharpCode.TextEditor for syntax highlighting. It is the text editor component for the SharpDevelop project. SharpDevelop is a free open source IDE.

Although Metadrone is not a derivative work of ICSharpCode.TextEditor, this component has been altered for use with Metadrone. The modified source code can be downloaded here on Google code.