Re: ER Diagramming Tools?

On Wed, 28 Mar 2007, Roth, Gabrielle wrote:

> Sounds like a fact-finding mission is in order! I'm interested in hearing
> what you find out, Richard.

gabrielle,

What I've found so far is not encouraging.

1) Dia-0.95-1 and -0.96 won't compile here. There's a problem with missing
docbook.xslt and glibc doubly-freeing memory or a pointer. T'ain't supposed
to happen with the latter version, but it does.

Regardless, dia will diagram the schema after it's been defined. I, too,
have read of its ability to generate sql, but have not tried that.

2) Eclipse with the Azurri Clay plug in does a nice job of letting the
user graphically define tables, fields, and relations, then generating the
sql. I used it about 4 years ago for a small project and it worked well.
However, I don't do java (except in the cup next to the keyboard on the
desk), so I removed eclipse from my system.

Eclipse is a very large, resource-intensive application. It does not seem
worth while for me to reinstall it for this one schema.

3) Graphviz does both directed (dot) and undirected (neato) graphs
exceptionally well. If I need to make a picture of the schema, graphviz is
what I'll use.

I was looking for a tool that would facilitate creating the schema for
this project. There does not seem to be anything more efficient than writing
it by hand. I may draw it just to check that it's all there and tables are
properly related, but otherwise it's joe/emacs in a virtual console for the
job.

Thanks,

Rich

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Richard B. Shepard, Ph.D. | The Environmental Permitting
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