For those of you who didn't catch the news, first I updated the installer for the bulk loader so that it actually included the program. Seemed like a nice thing to do. Right now it's just a zip file, but give me a little bit and I'll make it back into a program installer. More importantly, I've been busy working on the ability to capture and recreate the database schema as well.

Right now, for the most part, it works. There are cleanups that I would like to add to the interface, and I need to add some command line options to make the schema generation scriptable. Once that's done, I'll put out a release. This one will be a commercial product, although there will always be a free version available that just updates the tables. I'll also be handing out a few copies to people interested in becoming beta testers, because I need real user feedback on this product before I can expect customers to pay money for it.

There are several situations where this product will be useful:

1. Database installs, especially when a large amount of data is needed.
2. Customer support. The tool is easily scriptable, allowing support staff to quickly take an image of customer data for debugging purposes. It can be as simple as putting an icon on the user's desktop.
3. Programmers who need to store data images for different testing scenarios

If you'd like to be a beta tester, please contact me privately.