[thelist] ERD/UML design tool

[Chris Johnston]

On 3/16/06, sbeam <sbeam at onsetcorps.net> wrote:

> Has anyone used this Database Designer product? any opinion on it?
> http://microolap.com/products/database/mysql-designer/
> or would Case Studio, Visual Paradigm be a better bet...?
>
> Have been looking for a good, reasonable cost, simple database design
> tool for quite a while. Not a full blown CASE app but just something
> that will do ERD and generate SQL for a variety of RDBMSs. And maybe
> some UML


I have not used the tool specified, but here are some suggestions for other
possibilities, all of which are free (but not necessarily open source)

For UML
Poseidon for UML - A not too bad tool for doing UML diagrams. Is probably
the easiest to learn since all the tools are easily accessible without
having to wade through specification dialogue boxes and wizards.
http://www.gentleware.com


For ER Diagrams
DBDesigner4 - Just does MySQL though, but does an excellent job, although it
can be a little finnicky at times and (for me at least), has a history of
crashing unless used just right
http://fabforce.net/dbdesigner4/

Clay - This is a plug-in for Eclipse that allows for ER diagrams to be
created. I have used it and it is quite good, although very limited in what
you are able to do. It does not support all of the different types of
relationships that can exist between tables. However, it can output DDL for
a variety of different RDBMs.
http://www.azzurri.jp/en/software/clay/index.jsp


For ER and UML
Oracle's jDeveloper - yeah, it is a full blown case tool designed for Java,
but it also has excellent ER diagramming capabilities and UML tools
http://www.oracle.com/technology/products/jdev/index.html

Just a few suggestions that I could think of.

Chris
--
www.fuzzylizard.com