Recommended data modeling tool?

  • What are people using as a database modeling tool?  I'm looking for one that's not too expensive, that will allow re-engineering from the 2000 database, modifying the schema for the 2005 database.

  • ERwin and ERStudio tools.

    I don't know the pricing.

    MohammedU
    Microsoft SQL Server MVP

  • HI

    I am using Xcase http://www.xcase.com.

    You can reenginer at any time. Will provide documention 400 + pages for one of me DBs

    I have been happy with it

     

    John

     

  • We too have been using xcase.. and have been quite happy with the product (though not as happy with the responsiveness of the vendor)..

    Are you able to use it against sql2005?  and if so, which version of xcase are you using?

  • Only using it with SQL 2K

    Version 7.4 build 2320

    I am not an expert on SQL so can not judge all the shortcomings that it may have.

     

    I know it saved me lots of time and effort not having to learn scripts and most importantly what to put in them.

     

     

  • The obvious choice would be Erwin, which I use. We could then share diagrams between anhyone else with erwin. It doesn’t read database dumps though. It can connect and reverse engineer various databases.

    There is no option for MySQL and Postgres, but it does all the others. There is an ODBC generic option which we may be able to use here, but I’ve not experimented with it.

    With the Planet Rugby stats development, which I’ve got on the back burner, I used the MySQL DDL and converted all the datatypes into Oracle, before loading the design into Erwin….You can then forward engineer the design into a completely different database DDL.

    The next time you are visiting, I’ll give you a demo of what it can do. It has been around for a long time and is a mature product – its only disadvantage is that it is now owned and supported by Computer Associates!

    You can, for example, reverse engineer a LIVE and UAT schema, and generate a change script to bring the schemas in line.

    Pre-Oracle9, you could use Oracle exports with indexfile=Y to extract DDL….but it also required a lot of editing.

    Oracle9 and above, the dbms_metadata package can be used to extract DDL.

    For Sybase, there’s bcp to extract data, but I’m not familiar with all the options, and whether or not its possible to extract DDL.

  • We were always pleased with ERwin.

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