Hi,
Thanks for the question.
The addition of new categories to the generators tree is not available in this version and will be implemented in a future version.
At this point, you can add your own generator to one of the existing categories:
Business,
Health,
Location,
IT,
Payment,
Personal, or
Product.
To add a new generator, please do the following (the example is provided based on the
regular expression generator, since it is the most customizable one):
1. Open the folder:
"C:\Users\Public\Documents\Devart\dbForge Data Generator for SQL Server\Data Generators"
and create a file with the extension *.xml or copy/paste one of the existing files, and edit it;
2. The file should contain the code:
Code: Select all
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<Generators xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xmlns:xsd="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema">
<Generator>
<Category>IT</Category>
<Name>Enter a generator name here</Name>
<ShortName>Enter a short name here</ShortName>
<Description>Enter a description here</Description>
<Type>SqlRegularExpressionGenerator</Type>
<ColumnTypes>
<Type>varchar</Type>
<Type>char</Type>
</ColumnTypes>
<Matches>
<Match table=".*Test.*" сolumn=".*Name.*" Priority="100" minlen="4"/>
<Match table=".*Test.*" сolumn="Name" priority="90" minlen="4"/>
<Match table=".*Test.*" сolumn="Name" priority="80" minlen="4"/>
<Match table=".*" сolumn="^Addr.*Type$" priority="70" minlen="4"/>
<Match table="Language" column="Lang.*Id$" priority="60" minlen="2"/>
<Match table=".*" сolumn="^extn.*" priority="20" minlen="50" maxlen="60"/>
<Match table=".*" сolumn="^SIN$" priority="5"/>
<Match table="(Person|User|Cust|Emp|Employee)" column="SIN" priority="10"/>
</Matches>
<Options>
<Expression>Your regular expression should be here</Expression>
</Options>
</Generator>
</Generators>
Explanation of tags:
3.1 <Category>IT</Category> - the category a custom generator is added to;
3.2 <Name>Enter a generator name here</Name> - the name of a generator being added;
3.3 <ShortName>Enter a short name here</ShortName> - the name of a generator that will be displayed in the Preview window;
3.4 <Description>Enter a description here</Description> - the description of a generator;
3.5 <Type>SqlRegularExpressionGenerator</Type> - the type of a basic generator on which a created generator is based;
3.6 <ColumnTypes><Type>varchar</Type><Type>char</Type></ColumnTypes> - data types for which a generator will be available;
3.6.1 Data types: any of
SQL Server data types;
3.7 <Matches></Matches> - adds the rules for auto-mapping;
3.7.1 Mapping rules:
table="" - a name of the matched table(s);
column="" - a name of the matched column(s);
. * - any number of characters;
^ - strict beginning of a name, i.e. "^Test.*" means that the beginning of the name must be "Test", followed by any characters (the valid table names are the following: test, testing, Test123, etc);
$ - strict end of a name, i.e. ".*Test$" means that the end of the name must be "Test", preceded by any characters (the valid table names are the following: test, myTest, 123test, etc);
| - "or" listing;
priority="n" - mapping priority - the rule according to which a generator is automatically assigned to a column (the higher the number, the higher the priority; for the custom generators it should be higher than 4 because default sql data type generators have the priority range between 1 and 4);
minlen="n" - the minimum permissible length of a column (the parameter is ignored for varchar(max), text, image and similar sql data types);
maxlen="n" - the maximum length of a column (this parameter is optional; the parameter is ignored for varchar(max), text, image and similar sql data types).
3.8 <Expression>([0-9A-Z])</Expression> -
regular expression that will automatically fill a table column with generated data;
4. Save the *.xml file.
5. Launch (or relaunch) the dbForge Data Generator.
Have you managed to add your own data generator?
Best Regards.