xplain2sql converts Xplain to various dialects of SQL. Xplain is the best and easiest data modeling language known to mankind.

xplain2sql is used to convert Xplain to various SQL dialects. It optionally also can generate a .xml description of the file, which can be used for various code generation purposes, like writing wrapper to access the data, or generating a GraphQL schema.

Convert an Xplain file:

xplain2sql -mysql example.ddl

Try it out online.

Either download a binary or the C source tarball.

If you downloaded the tarball, you generate a binary with:

tar xvf xplain2sql-5.0.1-csrc.tar.gz
cd xplain2sql-5.0.1
make

Employee database example:

database employee.

# First the DDL.

base department name (A30).
base town (A30).
base name (A30).
base salary (R9,2).

type department (A3)  = department name, business_town.
type employee (A3)    = name, home_town, department, salary.

# Define some departments and employees.

insert department "D1" its
    department name = "Factory",
    business_town = "Guilding".

insert employee "E1" its
    name = "Mr. Johnson",
    home_town = "London",
    department = "D1",
    salary = 1600.

insert employee "E3" its
    name = "Mr. Test",
    home_town = "Guilding",
    department = "D1",
    salary = 1500.


# Example 1: Select data of the employee with the identification E3.

get employee "E3".

• A brief introduction to Xplain's Semantic Data Language.
• The Xplain language syntax.
• See the Johan ter Bekke tribute site for many articles and contributions about the Xplain language.

See also my Xplain page for more tools and utilities.

The xplain2sql support page is http://www.berenddeboer.net/xplain2sql/.

There is an extensive manual covering use of the tool, its internals and many examples.

Requirements, either:

1. ISE Eiffel 19.12.

2. Latest Gobo.

If you use ISE Eiffel, you can open src/xplain2sql.ecf with ISE Studio and compile the project.

If you use the command-line, compile with geant compile_ge to compile with Gobo or geant compile_ise to compile with ISE.