Question

I am looking for a tool to help in designing and implementing database and entities for a Java project. Probably we are using JPA or direct Hibernate. The features I look for are:

• Design database with visual modeller
• Create entities from the visual model
• Update entity changes to the visual model
• Import existing database schema as visual model / entity classes

So the idea is to originally create a database model with visual tool, then auto-to generate entities from it and afterwards modify the code and expect the visual diagram to reflect the changes (so it works for documentation purposes). I want a full representation of table schema, not just an ER diagram.

There have been other questions (of course) but they don’t seem to be so specific to Java/JPA and don’t have as strict requirements. They are also often just about generating a diagram from code or database schema – they don’t require bi-directional support (if that’s the right term).

The products I found so far are:

• NetBeans (6.7.1): supports generating Java classes from UML, JPA needs specific templates (sounds too tricky). Doesn’t identify new elements from classes.
• DbSchema: Seems to offer some visualization of schemas, couldn’t get it started so can’t say much. Commercial, but it also has a free version.
• Omondo EclipseUML: seems to have some sort of support, but costs like hell.
• SchemaSpy: Supports only creating documentation from an existing database schema. Also couldn’t find a comprehensive graph.
• Toad Data Modeller: Somewhat messy homepage, however seems to support creating diagrams from existing DB as well as creating DB schema from a diagram. Doesn’t have code generation facilities.
• Eclipse WTP‘s Dali JPA Tools: No support for visual presentation, however targeted at providing aid to JPA development.

As a conclusion, Dali seems most interesting, because it’s targeted for JPA development. However, it doesn’t seem to have a visual diagram of any sort (just outlines and stuff).

Any suggestions?

Answer 1

Have a look at th JPA Diagram Editor for Eclipse, the first Milestone has been released recently. From the announcement:

I am happy to announce that the JPA
Diagram Editor project made its first
milestone release – 0.5 RC1. Just
follow the installation
instructions, posted on the
project’s wiki, and you are ready
to build your JPA model in a diagram.
There is a nice Getting Started
tutorial to help your first steps. If
you want to take a quick look before
installing, then check our demo
on YouTube.

The JPA Diagram Editor is a new
incubating project in the WTP
Incubator. The project is initiated by
SAP and aims to contribute the
existing JPA Diagram Editor from the
SAP NetWeaver Developer Studio, and
continue its future development in the
Eclipse community. This contribution
is based on the Graphiti project – the
new graphics modeling infrastructure
in Eclipse.

The official 0.5 version of the
project will provide a stable release
of the initial contribution. Due to
the migration to Graphiti, there are
some bugs to be cleaned and we are
actively working on them.
Nevertheless, we decided to release
early to hear your feedback sooner. If
you eventually find a bug, then please
report it in the WTP Incubator
Bugzilla (use component
wtp.inc.jpaeditor). You can check the
list of already reported bugs if that
bug has already been found – we are
actively testing at the moment.

Please, note that currently the JPA
Diagram Editor supports only JPA 1.0
projects. This mean that you will not
see the “Open Diagram” action in the
context menu of JPA 2.0 projects. JPA
2.0 support is definitely on our radar screen. We will start working on it
after releasing the stable 0.5
version.