Re: [GENERAL] entity relationship diagram free software

Hi Sarah,

ERwin is (by all accounts fab) but:

1) It cost an arm and a leg and you usually have to throw in another limb
for support.
2) It more that a documentation program. It's a database management
package so that most of its functionality comes from its 'integration' with
a DBMS and postgreSQL is not supported.

I have been playing with a shareware tool called Database Design Studio
from a company in Singapore (http://www.ChilliSource.com/dds/).

Sure it's not ERwin and its ER diagraming feature is its weakest feature
but considering it cost approximately 3000 times less than ERwin and does a
lot of groovy things it's not a bad deal at all. It is however a 'stricly
Windows' package.

I'm pasting a bit of blurb from their web site at the end of this posting.

You can get a trail download from the URL above.

cheers,

Stuart.

DDS FEATURES

Project Management of database files, including schemas, scripts, ERDs,
ODBC DSNs, table, views, Datastores and other project files.

Entity Relationship Diagram (ERD) editor. Supports the full Chen ER model.

Full cardinality and connectivity support for Foreign Key placement, update
and delete rules.

Support for ANSI, Ingres, InterBase, Informix, SQLBase, MicroSQL, Microsoft
Access, Microsoft SQL Server, and Oracle DBMSs as well as Microsoft Visual
Basic and Java (with JDBC) source code.

Automatic Data Structure Diagram (DSD) from ERD.

Automatic SQL "CREATE TABLE" schemas from ERD for the above DBMS
implementations.

Automatic SQL scripts for populating the database.

Automatic "DROP TABLE" scripts for dropping the tables from the database.

SQL Console window (ODBC connectivity to any data source).

Tree view of any ODBC data source including primary and foreign key details
(where the ODBC driver supports it) within the SQL Console.

Create, access and query a local MS-Access database based upon your model
without the need to even own MS-Access, all from within the DDS environment.

Fully constrained off-line Datastore for creation of data that can be
uploaded into your database.

Java source code for creating and dropping tables within your JDBC
accessible database (JDK is not included).

Fully integrated Java edit, build, run environment.

Syntax high-lighting of reserved and keywords in SQL, Java and VB editors.

Complete build/run environment for any Project file (SQL, Java, JSQL, etc).

ODBC DSN Manager integration.

>I am looking for a freeware tool to document my postgres database
>tables, indices, etc.
>A friend of mine uses ERwin, but this is a licensed package his company
>had to buy. I
>Are there any free software tools that people use to create entity
>relationship diagrams
>and to document databases?
>
>Thanks,
>
>Sarah Officer
>officers(at)aries(dot)tucson(dot)saic(dot)com

+-------------------------+--------------------------------------+
| Stuart Rison | Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research |
+-------------------------+ 91 Riding House Street |
| Tel. (0171) 878 4041 | London, W1P 8BT, UNITED KINGDOM. |
| Fax. (0171) 878 4040 | stuart(at)ludwig(dot)ucl(dot)ac(dot)uk |
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