Thread: entity relationship diagram free software
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@aries.tucson.saic.com
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@aries.tucson.saic.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@ludwig.ucl.ac.uk | +-------------------------+--------------------------------------+
Sarah Officer wrote: > > 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? Well, this is as good a chance as any to mention that I've been hacking on pgaccess to add these features. It's at a very early stage, though: basically, all I've done is clone the 'save visual query design' feature I added in 0.96, with a tab to the main interface window, labelled 'schema'. I've gotten sidetracked from adding more features by other work (the lines connecting tables with color coded field types was enough for this project). The method for storing relationship information in the db is non-optimum, and the window really needs to be resizeable. Printing is only possible by either grabbing a screen shot, or connecting to the running app. with a tcl console and convincing the canvas to generate a Postscript file for you. Well, this is no longer true - I just now went ahead and made a 'print' button that generates the postscript file for you. you still need some way to print postscript, though. If anyone wants a peek at my (buggy) version, send me a note, and I'll fire a copy at you. A screen shot is available at http://wallace.ece.rice.edu/schema.html -- Ross J. Reedstrom, Ph.D., <reedstrm@rice.edu> NSBRI Research Scientist/Programmer Computer and Information Technology Institute Rice University, 6100 S. Main St., Houston, TX 77005
I have checked the bakc archives and can find several references to the following error, but know fixes. OS: Linux (kernel v2.2.2) Distro: YellowDogLinux (Red Hat based) Arch: PowerPC (not a G3) PG: 6.4.2 The error is that any operation having to do with oid type's results in an error, ie: createdb test destroydb test ERROR: typeidTypeRelid: Invalid type - oid = 0 ERROR: typeidTupeRelid: Invalid type - oid = 0 Same thing if I load psql and do a \d <tablename>. I can create databases and tables and such however. Ideas? pg 6.3.x worked on linux ppc platforms previously, but the newer distros might be using the new glibc. Would this make a difference? -JP
> Well, this is as good a chance as any to mention that I've been hacking > on pgaccess to add these features. It's at a very early stage, though: > basically, all I've done is clone the 'save visual query design' feature > I added in 0.96, with a tab to the main interface window, labelled > 'schema'. I've gotten sidetracked from adding more features by other > work (the lines connecting tables with color coded field types was > enough for this project). The method for storing relationship > information in the db is non-optimum, and the window really needs to be > resizeable. Printing is only possible by either grabbing a screen shot, > or connecting to the running app. with a tcl console and convincing the > canvas to generate a Postscript file for you. > > Well, this is no longer true - I just now went ahead and made a 'print' > button that generates the postscript file for you. you still need some > way to print postscript, though. > > If anyone wants a peek at my (buggy) version, send me a note, and I'll > fire a copy at you. A screen shot is available at > http://wallace.ece.rice.edu/schema.html This looks very nice, and tcl/tk/pgaccess is certainly a good tool for this. Please keep going and see if you can roll it into pgaccess source. -- Bruce Momjian | http://www.op.net/~candle maillist@candle.pha.pa.us | (610) 853-3000 + If your life is a hard drive, | 830 Blythe Avenue + Christ can be your backup. | Drexel Hill, Pennsylvania 19026