A low-budget alternative is Data Architect by theKompany.com (not to be
confused with Sybase's product, which I think used to be called by the same
name before it became Power Designer). I've only used this for about 30
minutes at the most, so I can't really say how good it is, but it has some
interesting features:
1. The download version costs $39.95 (that's right, forty bucks!)
2. It stores all of its data files as XML
3. It is available for both Linux and Windows (and with XML data files,
there aren't any interoperability problems)
The Windows version is a little odd, but appears to work just fine. They
wrote the Linux version first, then ported the software to Windows. The
program uses the Trolltech Qt library (same as the Linux desktop manager
KDE), so the Windows version is this tiny little executable with a HUGE
Qt.dll file that translates the Qt calls into Win32 functions (the .dll is
several MB in size).
The only down side to Data Architect is that it does not directly support
Microsoft SQL Server (making it the antithesis of Visio, I guess). It has
physical data models for PostgreSQL, mySQL, Oracle, ANSI-92, and a couple
of others that I don't remember. There is a reverse-engineer function, but
I never tried it.
Basically, I evaluated the software and decided that since my company had
already licensed Visio, I'd stick with it. However, if I were paying the
bill myself, I would seriously consider Data Architect. Not only is it
inexpensive, but it's one of the only products available for Linux.
Incidentally, the same company also has a Web Editor called Quanta Gold
that supports ColdFusion, XML, PHP, SQL, Python, Perl, DTML - Zope, C++ and
HTML. It also uses the Qt library and so is available for both Linux and
Windows. I've never used it, so please don't consider this an endorsement.
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Jeffry Houser
<jeff@farcryfly. To: SQL <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
com> cc:
Subject: RE: SQL 7 Database Diagrams
01/31/2002 10:37
AM
Please respond
to sql
At 09:58 AM 01/31/2002 -0500, you wrote:
>If all you want is to do a visual design and get basic printouts and
>reports, Visio works wonderfully and is much less expensive than the other
>tools. If you want something a bit more powerful, then I recommend you
>evaluate Embarcadero's ER/Studio.
Brilliant, thanks for that link. I was researching these a while ago and
only found ER/Studio (Which was ~$4000). After using it for a month, I
decided that I could not warrant the cost for a piece of software that I
would use only a couple of times a year.
They offered to sell me a $2000 version that only worked on SQL Server.
What I really would love (to my knowledge still doesn't exist) was a
program that would allow for this type of situation:
I have a table:
users (UserID, userinfo, address, state)
And I want to create it into two tables, without losing any referential
integrity:
users(UserID, userinfo, address, stateID)
state(StateID, state)
Embarcadero said they were developing a product to do that (but it was
not in beta yet). They said it would be a lot more expensive than the
ER/Studio because it delt with the data, not just the table structure.
--
Jeffry Houser | mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
AIM: Reboog711 | ICQ: 5246969 | Fax / Phone: 860-223-7946
--
Need a Web Developer? Contact me!
My Book: Instant ColdFusion 5 | http://www.instantcoldfusion.com
My New Book: ColdFusion: A Beginner's Guide February 2002
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