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ERD Apps a Missing OSS Niche?

Posted by Cliff on from the drawing-lines-and-boxes dept.

Pennyless Developer asks: "So the time comes when one must design a brand spankin' new database schema. You want to use an Entity-Relationship diagramming tool with hopefully some automatic schema generation tools, but do not have much money to purchase anything like Rational Rose. Like a true geek well versed in OSS, you head off to scan sourceforge, freshmeat, and google. But alas, it appears no such applications exist in the OSS world, at least none beyond the planning stage. The question I pose is this: What useful, OSS/Free/Cheap ERD applications have you found and used? Or do developers do all their ERD work under an evaluation period of commercial software?"

3 of 25 comments (clear)

  1. Join the trolls! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Offtopic

    Details:

    IRC Server - trollaxor.com
    Port - 6667
    Channel - #trolls

    You need an IRC client to chat on an IRC server.

  2. DBVisualizer or Visual Thought by Will+Sargent · · Score: 1, Offtopic

    A shameless plug for Visual Thought. It won't do ERD automatically, but it's great for the stuff you'd use a whiteboard for usually.

    If you want to look at the structure of an existing database, try DBVisualizer

  3. You need a different database by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Offtopic

    I know I'll get modded down for this, but here goes. Switch to SQL Server. It has the tools you request already.