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@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              |
+-------------------------+--------------------------------------+

I am not able to open this URL (http://www.ChilliSource.com/dds/)
<http://www.ChilliSource.com/dds/)&gt; . Is this correct?

-----Original Message-----
From: Stuart Rison [SMTP:stuart@ludwig.ucl.ac.uk]
Sent: Thursday, April 22, 1999 3:36 AM
To: officers@aries.tucson.saic.com
Cc: pgsql-general@postgreSQL.org
Subject: 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@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              |
	+-------------------------+--------------------------------------+

hum... works for me! You could try without the dds at the end?

Stuart.

I am not able to open this URL (http://www.ChilliSource.com/dds/)
<http://www.ChilliSource.com/dds/)&gt; . Is this correct?

+-------------------------+--------------------------------------+
| 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

I went looking for such a package some time ago and stumbled on a page from
Holland (I believe) which offers some free (to non-comercial users)
documentation software which supports both ERDs and DFDs, plus many other
drawing-types about which I know nothing. The software is available in binary
only, unfortunately, but many platforms are supported.

I have found the software to be quite good on my Linux machine (at home); at
work (commercial...) I am happy to have the much more sophisticated packages
which support the generation of SQL from the ERD etc. These cost a great deal
more, however. On the otherhand, the author of the package, TCM: "Toolkit for
Conceptual Modeling", does claim it would be "not too difficult" to write such a
package, and he does provide a decent description of his file format.

The package can be found at:
http://wwwis.cs.utwente.nl:8080/~tcm/index.html

Cheers,
Mark
--
Mark Dalphin email: mdalphin@amgen.com
Mail Stop: 29-2-A phone: +1-805-447-4951 (work)
One Amgen Center Drive +1-805-375-0680 (home)
Thousand Oaks, CA 91320 fax: +1-805-499-9955 (work)