Re: tool for DB design

Hi Nikolay,

Were you able to get any closer to your objective on this email thread?

I spent quite a bit of time researching the web on this question back
in June - Is there an Open Source option for doing "round trip" data
modeling for PostgreSQL?

As far as the E-R or UML diagramming, Dia and Umbrello are definitely
the tools I liked the best, with ArgoUML coming in 3rd. Dia is Gnome-
based, Umbrello uses KDE and ArgoUML is Java Swing based.

Of these, only Dia appears to have "relatively" complete machinery
for turning UML diagrams --> PostgreSQL DDL SQL and visa/versa.

The major options are listed here:

http://www.gnome.org/projects/dia/links.html

Basically, these are a collection of scripts - PERL, PHP & Python,
for turning the Dia UML objects (saved as XML in a Dia file) into DDL
SQL. The following tools were specifically capable of handling
PostgreSQL's DDL SQL dialect:

Dia UML --> PostgreSQL DDL SQL
teDia2SQL
Dia2SQL
Dia2Postgres
(dia2PgSQL - this one I've lost and can't find it on the web anymore)

PostgreSQL DDL SQL --> Dia UM
PostgreSQL_AutoDoc

In the end, I chose teDia2SQL (http://tedia2sql.tigris.org/), though
it doesn't do everything I needed, it seem to get me closest.

In the end, I started using ideas I got from reading the teDia2SQL
code to write my own truly "round trip" scripts in Ruby to go back &
forth easily between Dia & PostgreSQL DDL SQL. Unfortunately, I had
to move on to other tasks, before getting very far along on this, but
I do hope to get back to it eventually.

I'm kinda hoping one of the Open Source UML tools - Umbrello, Neptune
or ArgoUML/PoseidonUML will get to this task before I do. If they
added full "round trip" translation between their diagrams/models and
PostgreSQL DDL SQL, and they all adopt the XMI file format, so that
UML & E/R diagrams can be stored as SVG-like XML instances that any
tool can open and edit, then we'll be set.

I expect we're still at least 1.5 - 2.0 years from there, yet.

Good luck.

Cheers,
Bill

On Nov 25, 2005, at 6:22 AM, Tino Wildenhain wrote:

> Nikolay Samokhvalov schrieb:
>> dbvis isn't the thing what I need. Or I'm blind and cannot find where
>> I can draw ER/UML diagram then transform it to physical, then obtain
>> SQL code. Or, just physical->SQL. Please correct me if I'm wrong.
>
> Well, I mentioned DIA for this - reread my mail please ;)
> I said DIA for ER -> SQL and dbvis for physical -> ER.
> physical -> SQL is covered by pg_dump.
>
>> On 25/11/05, Tino Wildenhain <tino(at)wildenhain(dot)de> wrote:
>>> Am Freitag, den 25.11.2005, 02:25 +0300 schrieb Nikolay Samokhvalov:
>>>
>>>> Please, suggest any free/opensource tool for DB design under
>>>> Linux. I
>>>> need following: ER (or UML)-diagram -> physical diagram -> SQL
>>>> code (I
>>>> don't even dream about reverse transformation...) Quite good
>>>> example
>>>> of such tool is Sybase PowerDesigner (which supports Postgres), but
>>>> AFAIK it runs only under win and costs $...
>>>
>>> dia can do this and I guess a lot of other tools.
>>> For the reverse check out db visualizer (dbvis)
>>> http://www.minq.se/products/dbvis/
>>>
>>> Which has a very nice ER-view.
>>> (With autorouting, which many tools, even the $$$-ones
>>> miss)
>>>
>>> ++Tino
>>>
>>>
>> --
>> Best regards,
>> Nikolay
>
>
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Bill Bug
Senior Analyst/Ontological Engineer

Laboratory for Bioimaging & Anatomical Informatics
www.neuroterrain.org
Department of Neurobiology & Anatomy
Drexel University College of Medicine
2900 Queen Lane
Philadelphia, PA 19129
215 991 8430 (ph) - 215 843 9367 (fax)