Comments on: Easy Database Schema Diagrams with DBVisualizer

By: beechfielder

beechfielder — Sat, 08 Dec 2007 12:03:49 +0000

Thank you very much for this. I have downloaded and am using this tool. My situation is that I work with a badly designed database and at the same time am studying database design. For my assessment this semester I need to write on the following ‘Assess
the importance of data modelling and relational theory when designing
and developing a relational database’
The table reference view is very helpful, even though the tables in this particular are not InnoDB and so have no referential integrity restraints (oh how my life would have been easier if only it had them!), I can still see a visual layout of tables and columns. My plan is to create new ER Diagrams for my project and show where the current database could be improved. I will use Toad Data Modeller I expect, or just create them in a graphics programme.
The application now has a MySQL driver by default.

By: busy

busy — Tue, 22 May 2007 19:15:53 +0000

@Marc
Normalization is SO not an option, its a necessity. And it’s really more of a concept than a skill, kind of like the idea of separating content from presentation is more of a concept than a skill.

If anyone doesn’t get what normalization is about you should go do some googling right now (or at least before you mess with another database) It’ll take you maybe 30 minutes to grasp the concept and you’ll enjoy an aha! moment when you apply what you’ve learned.

By: Marc

Marc — Wed, 16 May 2007 10:46:22 +0000

With regards to James’ comment (and Matthew’s reply) As web databases become more complex do you think it would be beneficial for web developers to learn such skills as ERD and normalisation?

By: m0n5t3r

m0n5t3r — Tue, 15 May 2007 11:44:36 +0000

James: actually, that’s what I stopped to Clay: I needed a design tool, to make teh pretty pictures before coding, and being able to skip implementing the schema by hand was also a plus (after I checked the sql output and saw that it’s what I intended ;)

By: Matthew Magain

Matthew Magain — Tue, 15 May 2007 11:42:55 +0000

James, you make some good points, albeit in a quaintly abrasive manner. Like I mentioned in the post, it’s often the case that a developer is presented with the task of reverse engineering a database (which was how I stumbled upon the tool in the first place). No it’s no substitute for a proper database design tool (like Rational or the Oracle toolset for example) but it still should serve as a useful tool for many of the developers out there. Re terminology, I opted not to use the term Entity-Relationship Diagram, partly because, as you say, it doesn’t show true relationships, just foreign key constraints, but also because it’s a term more familiar to traditional software engineers rather than web developers. If you have another suggestion then I’m all ears.

By: hannson

hannson — Tue, 15 May 2007 11:00:19 +0000

I use DBDesigner (which will eventually be replaced by MySQL Workbench) and export the database to a SQL file where I review the code. Then I use SQL Fairy (SQL::Translator) to create a ORM schema in perl code.

It’s very quick when using a framework like Catalyst! It saves you a lot of time ;)

By: James

James — Tue, 15 May 2007 09:01:54 +0000

Its still a shame that most of these miss the entire point of an entity relationship diagram (ERD), its a design document, not something you should have produced after you made the application but ‘before’ in your design phase.

The reason you do this before is so you can normalize your database, can you really do that through phpmyadmin? Heck no. They also fail to show the critical part of an ERD which is the true relationships between entities. One to many, many to many, one to one, cyclic relationships and also not all foreign keys are defined or atleast done correctly in archaic applications.

So the next time you are designing an app, even if its a blog, please learn ERD’s, and just use paper and a pencil or something like visio and do this ‘before’ you build your database, for the love of god i have seen some shockers in my time.

Oh and for the author, the above is not usually referred to as a schema diagram, as a schema is your database engine specific code to implement the actual ERD.

By: mrsmiley

mrsmiley — Mon, 14 May 2007 22:30:06 +0000

Hmmm … new ad block in the blogs. Annoying and very distracting (maybe it should be between the blog text and the comments, or below the comments box) … but I digress.

I was under the impression that phpMyAdmin has a tool to draw DB schema diagrams? From memory it even exports to PDF. The only time I’ve ever played with it (a few years ago) it was a pain to use with no WYSIWYG editor, but it does have one nevertheless.

By: dexterz

dexterz — Mon, 14 May 2007 14:12:50 +0000

This is a very handy tool. How much is this software cost?

By: m0n5t3r

m0n5t3r — Mon, 14 May 2007 11:20:53 +0000

ieah, it’s a nice software, too bad most of the useful features are locked in the free version…

I tried a few such interfaces in the past, and in the end I chose Squirrel SQL (open source query browser, also written in Java) for database shell/browse interaction, and Clay (an Eclipse plug-in that has decent reverse engineering capabilities and stores its data in an XML format that is reasonably easy to transform into a Propel schema, for instance, with XSLT - if you’re not fed up with Propel’s idiocies already, that is) for graphical database design.

P.S. working on Habari? :D