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Conceptual diagram tool

  • August 30, 2005 at 11:29 am

    #89595

    Hi there,

    I am looking for some advice or maybe some place to get more information about a problem we are facing. We are starting to develop a new application that will run on Oracle and SQL Server, and later maybe on PostgreSQL. While our application will handle these 2 RDBMS's to retrieve/update information, we are looking for a good tool that would provide the following:

    - Create and manage E/R diagrams including documentation, indexes, constraints etc...

    - Generate Scripts for a specific RDBMS that we pick

    Basically we want to design something without bothering with the RDBMS and then generate scripts to generate a schema based on a chosen RDBMS. This level of abstraction is important to us since we don't want to have to pull our hair everytime something needs to be done with the schema.

    We have looked at PowerDesigner (too much stuff), and also Embarcadero E/R Studio. Do you know any other ones that would do the job?

     

    Thanks in advance,

    Goodie

  • August 30, 2005 at 12:47 pm

    #586268

    You can try Case Studio 2 (www.casestudio.com)

  • August 30, 2005 at 2:02 pm

    #586284

    what about ERwin ?! haven't used it myself but have heard only rave reviews from everyone who has!!!







    **ASCII stupid question, get a stupid ANSI !!!**

  • August 31, 2005 at 1:02 am

    #586366

    I use Visio from Visual Studio for Enterprise Architects (2002 or 2003).

    Andy

  • August 31, 2005 at 7:26 am

    #586455

    G'Day all,

    I have used ERwin, Embarcadero, Visio, and (believe it or not) Powerpoint over the last 25 years.  Oh, yes - lets not forget white boards and paper.  It is truly amazing what tools some firms will and will not provide.  The following are my opinions and may or may nto be shared by anyone else, anywhere.  Your mileage may vary.

    ERWin is very easy to use and does a fine job of round-trip engineering.  The generated code is clean and easy to modify if necessary.  The versions of ERWin I have used did not have a million bells and whistles - the tool does a reasonable set of things, and does them extremely well.  This tool is my first choice.

    Embarcadero is part of a suite of development tools.  The suite of tools was put together through a combination of in-house develooment and aquisitions.  The result is a hodge podge of tools that overlap each other at times and do not really integrate all that well.  They are feature rich, and it is easy to become overwhelmed by the power and complexity.  You can still design DBs, but you can also fly the space shuttle.  The generated code was based on a configurable UI and almost never matched exactly what I wanted to see.  Embarcadero is feature rich with all the complexity one would expect from a very powerful toolset.  The learning curve should not be underestimated.

    Visio is a microsoft product.  It does exactly what microsoft telles you to do.  It is fair to good for reverse engineering and documenting an existing DB.  It is minimal for forward engineering.  It is better than nothing and costs significantly less than either ERWin or Embarcadero.

    Powerpoint is actually better than you might at first think, particularly in the early JAD sessions.  At a conceptual level, any tool that lets you do "boxes and lines", with some type of decorator on the lines is good enough.  Once you understand the problem space and solution space it is quite simple to translate the conceptual model into a real tool.  I spend a fair amount of time in conference rooms with Subject matter experts using PPT and an overhead projector.  The tools is good for capturing basic concepts in a non-intrusive manner, allowing the conversation to focus on the problem space rather than an esoteric UI.

    Stray thoughts from the trenches.  Hope this helps.

    Wayne

     

  • August 31, 2005 at 8:04 am

    #586472

    It actually does help a lot thanks. I will look at erWin today.

     

    Thanks for all the answers

  • August 31, 2005 at 8:38 am

    #586494

    I have to disagree with the complexity statement about Embarcadero ER/Studio, as well as the implication that ER/Studio was acquired.  It was not, it was developed by Embarcadero and continues to be supported well. ERwin was acquired by CA, which has a primary business strategy of acquiring products.  I find it odd that one would present the situation in reverse of the actual fact.

    ER/Studio is very intuitive, has essential features needed to do exactly what the orginal poster requested, and any other features will not get in the way of modeling and generating databases.

    I have worked with hundreds of people, both new and experienced modelers, who have had no problems using ER/Studio.  Former ERwin users find ER/studio very easy to use as both ERwin and ER/Studio are based on IDEF1x modeling standard.

    ERwin is a great product and also can do what the original poster has requested.  My clients, however, have found ER/Studio much easier to understand, aesthetically pleasing, and easy to use.

    I have used both products (and other modeling tools) and I find that neither is overly complex, a hodgepodge of features, nor difficult to undersand.  Both products are well placed within their respective organizations and both are well supported.

    Karen

  • August 31, 2005 at 11:41 am

    #586586

    Hi,

    you should review Sybase PowerDesigner.

    bye


    *** Ygnacio Durán ***

  • September 8, 2005 at 12:36 pm

    #588507

    We have used Enterprise Architect from Sparx systems. It is a very nice tool and very reasonably priced. You should check it out http://www.sparxsystems.com.au/

  • September 13, 2005 at 5:33 am

    #589307

    I was the One and Only Data Architect for Multiple backend databses. These databases included Access, Oracle (Unix and NT) and SQL.

    I have user Erwin & ModelMart extensively. Installation, use and Sharing Models in secure environments.

    It is definitely my preference.

  • September 13, 2005 at 6:19 am

    #589315

    Well,

    Here's a short followup. Right now, PowerDesigner is too much. It does too many things and we're only interested in the logical/physical modeling or our data. As well, the CA products look good but i was never able to find a downloadable demo of the repository/versioning system i could use with ERWin so well, unless I'm really stupid and can't see it in front of me (in that case, please help me :blush, I'm not gonna give it more try.

    Right now we're looking more into Embarcadero ER/Studio. We like it so far despite some flaws (like no comparison possible unless you use native connection, ie bye bye change scripts for mysql, etc...). I thought this was a huge drawback but my boss seems to think we could deal with that... Well, we'll see what that gives in the future but i'm still pretty uncomfortable with that problem. And the repository system crashed twice on me so far...

     

    Thanks for all the help everybody

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