Skipper

Software engineering usually takes advantage of the object-role modeling, which employs graphical symbols to create and explain definitions. But, creating these definitions every time you need them can get very time consuming, especially if you are working on a large scale project.

Skipper is an utility that enables you to create and edit visual definitions in the ORM framework of your choosing, in order to automate the project definition importing process. The application allows you to choose from a multitude of frameworks, including Doctrine, Doctrine2, Propel or CakePHP.

After selecting the desired ORM framework for your project, you can also choose the MVC framework you intend on using, such as Symfony, Zend Framework or simply without any MCV support. Regardless of the choice you make, you can make use of the same powerful functions for any of the aforementioned frameworks.

Skipper is a definition editor and creator, which means that it can be used to create and edit a wide variety of entities, fields or associations for your database projects. You can also add and modify various modules, plugins and regions, depending on the needs of your definitions. These are visible as graphical symbols inside the application and you can edit their every property using the built-in editor, including the auto-increment, size and not-null values.

One of the main characteristics of the application is its ability to import and export definitions under various file formats, for improved access speed and portability. Thus, you can import ORM schema files and external models, as well as export your project to PDF files or image documents.

All in all, thanks to the very intuitive interface and the large number of ORM frameworks supported, Skipper can be an invaluable tool for your database projects. You can also make good use of the visual representation capabilities and the various export formats available.