On Wed, 10 Jul 2002, Curt Sampson wrote:
> On Wed, 10 Jul 2002, Christoph Dalitz wrote:
>
> > > From: Jean-Christian Imbeault <jc@mega-bucks.co.jp>
> > >
> > > Can anyone recommend a free GUI DB design tool for Windows I could use
> > > to model my database design? (something similar to the design tool in MS
> > > access).
> > >
> > DataArchitect by TheKompany
> > (http://www.thekompany.com/products/dataarchitect/) seems to be a
> > powerful tool.
>
> I just played with it, and I can't say I'm very impressed. When I
> connected it to a postgres database and asked it to generate a document
> from that schema, it generated ten empty table definitions. And when
> creating tables, there seems no easy and automatic way to have it draw a
> line indicating that a foreign key in one table references a primary key
> in another, and make this line stick no matter where you move the table
> in the diagram. Also, I couldn't figure out how to delete items from the
> diagram.
>
> Not to mention that creating table definitions in it is a lot more
> work than just typing SQL into a text file.
>
> So after about half an hour of playing, I abandoned it. Unfortunately,
> I still have a need for some sort of graphical tool so I can make
> pretty pictures for clients, but I've got a good budget for it, so I'd
> be interested in any other recommendations. But I found this one hard
> enough to use that in the end my "tool" may be paying a drone to keep a
> Visio diagram up-to-date based on changes to my text files.
Pgaccess has a database design feature. It's currently called 'Schema'
unfortunately.
It doesn't generate a diagram from an existing database though and I'm not sure
about lines moving when items are moved around.
--
Nigel J. Andrews
Director
---
Logictree Systems Limited
Computer Consultants
