Re: [pgsql-general] DB GUI Design tool

On Wed, 10 Jul 2002 17:30:03 +0900 (JST)
Curt Sampson <cjs@cynic.net> wrote:
>
> On Wed, 10 Jul 2002, Christoph Dalitz wrote:
>
> > DataArchitect by TheKompany
> > (http://www.thekompany.com/products/dataarchitect/) seems to be a
> > powerful tool.
>
> I just played with it, and I can't say I'm very impressed. When I
> connected it to a postgres database and asked it to generate a document
> from that schema, it generated ten empty table definitions.
>
Admittedly I had not tried it.

> Not to mention that creating table definitions in it is a lot more
> work than just typing SQL into a text file.
>
At my former workplace we had an own program that took a text file
with the description of the data model, compared it with the structures
found in the Oracle database and created/altered tables accordingly.

It seems to me that this is the most effective approach because graphical
tools become clumsy when the model contains more than four tables.
Hopefully I can find some time in the future for an implementation of
something similar.

> So after about half an hour of playing, I abandoned it. Unfortunately,
> I still have a need for some sort of graphical tool so I can make
> pretty pictures for clients.
>
What good is a messy picture with hundred tables containing zillions of
attributes for your clients? Don't they need a somewhat simplified
overview of only the most important E/R's?

If it is only for pictures, there is a free UML-tool that I occasionally use:
http://wwwhome.cs.utwente.nl/~tcm/
It is written with Motif however and thus only runs on Unix.

If you eventually find something appropriate I would greatly appreciate a
short note on the tools that you have found.

Christoph Dalitz