In the past, I’ve used Visio (2003 Professional, if it matters) to doodle database diagrams while we’re in the conceptual design phase. This is pretty painful, though, because there’s no good way to get the data out of Visio (though this answer gives me hope of a temporary analgesic). Since the designs are generally pretty small, that pain hasn’t gotten too bad. But I’d really like to find a better, less painful, more sustainable solution.
My only real experience with this product category is very old (like, ER/Studio a decade ago), so I have no idea what the landscape looks like today. I’ve looked around on StackOverflow, and the only close match to my question I could find wasn’t very encouraging. Here are my basic requirements:
- Works offline. This is my major reason for not just using SSMS’s diagramming. There are times when I just want to throw diagrams around, possibly of half-finished designs, and refine them with others until we’re ready to instantiate the real database.
- Supports SQL Server 2000+. Other databases are nice, but 99% of our DBs are SQL Server, and most of them are 2000, with a few 2005.
- Just the diagrams. A lot of these tools are part of some comprehensive DBA or Model Architect Suite with performance tools or some kind of modeling process baked in. I don’t necessarily object to having those options if they stay out of the way, but all we need is diagramming, and forward-engineering of the SQL DDL. (Reverse engineering would be nice, though.)
- Can’t cost an arm and a leg. This is the tricky one, I know (and also pretty subjective). But we aren’t working some giant dysfunctional enterprise team. It’s just a handful of developers that occasionally have a more complicated database to chew over. There’s no way in heck I’m getting approval for a $5000 tool.
Does the product I’m looking for even exist?
EDIT: In a little poking around, I turned up a couple of things that look kind of promising; anyone have any experience with these tools?
- ModelRight, by ModelRight, Inc.
- BDB, by Bainsoft (I’m a little wary of this one, since Google mostly turns up pages of hits for shady “great software downloads!” sites)
- Aqua Data Studio, by Aquafold (mostly a replacement for tools like SSMS, but does have an ER modeler built in)
Quest Software has a tool called Toad Data Modeler which is not free, but doesn’t cost an arm and a leg either.
It’s high quality, very usable, very powerful. Definitely worth a look if you’re serious about data modelling in a professional environment.
Marc