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.
cjs
--
Curt Sampson <cjs@cynic.net> +81 90 7737 2974 http://www.netbsd.org
Don't you know, in this new Dark Age, we're all light. --XTC
