[ot] CASE tools / DB Design tools

[Domgrief]

Hi all,

Not sure if it's appropriate to make the first post an off-topic one, but honestly PL/SQL Developer has been such a handy tool over the past months while I've been developing packages, that I don't have much in the way of a wishlist or bug report

I've been using PL/SQL Dev quite happily so far to edit packages and create/edit tables, but the time has come to actually finalise the documentation, and I'm short of any good tools to produce a comprehensible database diagram.

Do any of you know of a package, hopefully around PL/SQL Developer's price range, which is capable of reverse engineering a database into a nice diagram?

I'm really only chasing the same level of complexity as you'd find in the diagram editor provided with MS SQL Server - something I can use to quickly and attractively demonstrate a database layout, without having to fudge around and create the model from scratch. Some control over colours and fonts would be nice.

In another project here, there's a database consisting of around 150 tables, whose diagram has to be manually edited in Visio to keep it in sync with the database. It would be nice to find a tool I could recommend to these guys also.

So far the closest RE tool I've seen is one named CASE Studio (www.casestudio.com), but at 349 USD it's far too expensive to justify a personal purchase, and not quite essential enough to try and justify the purchase to our bean counters.

Does anyone have any suggestions?

Thanks,
Nathan

 

[Marco Kalter]

How about schemester ? It's free.

 

[Domgrief]

Wow, both this and DB Designer 4 (recommended by Didier, another reader of the thread) look like excellent tools for what I need.

Especially for their price

Thanks for the help both of you! I'll check these out and probably post another reply to let you know how the reverse engineering went.

 

[Domgrief]

Brilliant results on both counts - thanks for the tipoffs!

I'm finding schemester to be a bit easier to work with, but dbd4 is producing nicer looking diagrams off the bat.

Both packages have been really easy to use, and I can get a fairly professional-looking diagram out within minutes.

 

[Holger B]

Hi Domgrief,

how did you get the DB Designer 4 to work with your Oracle DB. Trying to switch the Default database from MySQL to Oracle doesn't work. An so does the Script generation not work. The reverse generation throws an error saying "Table does not exist". So it's a nice looking tool and it might be fine for MySQL, but I would be pleased to see it working with oracle.

Holger

 

[Domgrief]

In terms of actual database design, I haven't had much luck there either I'm afraid. I'm not sure if it's possible at this stage to actually change an Oracle database.

It suits my needs for Reverse Engineering a database to produce a pleasant-looking diagram, but I'm not sure it can do much else with Oracle at the moment.

 

[BWendling]

Schemester does not support partitioned tables in ddl generation. I did not bother checking local compressed indexes.

 

[cyke64]

Hello ,

Here are news about Schema ER diagrammer for Oracle:
1) Schemester don't exit any more
2) DB designer 4 is always available but developement is abandonned
3) A new java open source project is born

The Mogwai ERDesigner is a entity relation modeling tool such as ERWin and co. The only difference is that it is Open Source and does not cost anything. It was designed to make database modeling as easy as it can be and to support the developer in the whole development process, from database design to schema and code generation. This tool was also designed to support a flexible plug in architecture, to extend the system simply by installing a new plug in. This way, everybody can implement new features and tools to make ERDesigner fit the requirements.

Features :

• can design database models using a powerfull and easy to use graphical editor
• can design database models using a powerfull and easy to use graphical editor
• can generate database schema for the most common databases such as MySQL , PostgreSQL and Oracle
• can maintain schema changes using the IVT (Intelligent version tracking) system. No more buggy complete compare!
• can reverse engineer your existing database
• can generate EJB Entity bean code ( XDoclet ready! )
• provides a powerfull plug in architecture for flexibility to the limits
• can generate database documentation as PDF files using Apache FOP

download link MOGWAI ER Designer
MOGWAI ER DESIGNER web site
Enjoy it and give useful remarks about this tool !

 

[kamrath]

Originally posted by cyke64:
1) Schemester don't exit any more

Although www.schemester.com is dead, you can still get the app at download.com or zdnet.com.