Open Source Design Tools?

mbogosian asks: "Recently, my broadened responsibilities have me doing some database design and modeling, and I'm happy for the new knowledge and experience, but I'm a bit frustrated about the tool selection. I know most of us have had plenty of experience with at least a handful of all the wonderful Open Source development tools out there (like GCC, GNU Make, Subversion , and Perl to name a few). My question is this: where are OpenSource design tools? I've tried what I could find on SourceForge, but (as usual?) most of the projects that sounded promising were either still in the planning stages or seemed abandoned. Of course something which allowed be to create nifty class charts and output them to UML and/or SQL would be really cool, but I've yet to find something that works (especially in Linux). What are your favorite Open Source design tools and what do you like about them?"

Comments

Dia and Umbrello

[KDan]

Dia and Umbrello are the two I found to be some use. ArgoUML, a java program, was really unwieldy, and I don't recommend it. If you're just looking to draw a nice diagram (for presentation purposes), rather than use it in the design process, I found that actually OpenOffice's Drawing program was excellent for the purpose, with lots of arrow/line types (curved, straight, etc).

Daniel

UML Database Design

[Lomby]

I can strongly suggest using Dia in conjunction with tedia2sql. You can do the graphical design in Dia and then convert the result to SQL for various databases (Oracle/MySQL/PostgreSQL/...).
It is really fast and stable, it supports tables with indexes, primary keys, foreign keys, ...

Data Architect from The Kompany

[gadwale]

You may want to try Data Architect from The Kompany for database modelling.

I do not have much experience using it, but the screenshots look very slick (a good judge for open source apps since the UI is generally the weakest link!)

The listed features include:
* Workspace/Project oriented environment
* ERD centric data modelling
* model panner ("birds eye view")
* quick find and naviagtion from output window
* model validation
* full documentation capabilities
* integrated Advanced SQL Editor with syntax highlighting
* SQL Project - a multi-platform (Windows, Mac OS X, Linux), multi-database, integrated development environment
* save/load SQL sessions
* integrated ODBC
* multi-platform (Linux, MS Windows and soon Mac OS X)
* multi-database (ODBC, MySQL, PostgreSQL, DB2 and InterBase/FireBird coming soon)
* open file format (XML)
* DBMS specific features such as data types and SQL syntax
* reverse engineer existing databases
* generate create-scripts
* print model
* print data dictionary
* liberal use of tool-tips to help Users
* integrated Team Diagram> (general purpose diagramming)
* supports table inheritance
* supports; table, view, domain, sequence, procedure

Supported databases are:
* generic using ODBC
* MySQL
* PostgreSQL
* DB2
* InterBase/FireBird (in testing)

It is not free as in beer, but the license agreement seems to indicate that you will get the source. It is reasonably priced at $39.95 for the download version and you will be supporting a great company.

And don't be surprised if you get an email back from the president of the company, Shawn Gordon. I sent an email yesterday to the support address and received a reply from him within a few minutes.

You may also want to look at their BlackAdder IDE. Screenshots here.

Regards,

Adi Gadwale.

doxygen, dot and qcad

[Confuse Ed]

I tried Dia some time ago and found it very frustating to use, with most of built in objects being too restrictive and lacking enough variety of connection points to terminate lines and arrows.

For line diagrams (e.g. for documenting 3D graphics algorithms), I've moved on to qcad, which is a 2D CAD package.

For OO design, you can try doing this backwards : prototype the interfaces and classes and run doxygen (with dot) to generate inheritance and collaboration diagrams or XML output for post-processing. This probably fits in more with an extreme programming prototype/refactor style methodology than a complete up-front design methodology.

For state diagrams, I've had some success using dot on its own.

Using doxygen and dot has the significant additional feature that the files you edit are all plain-text files, so you can use your existing source revision control system (e.g. CVS)

Even with these packages however, I usually still find a pen and paper (or a white-board or blackboard if available) the easiest and fastest option for sketching out an initial design, or during discussions of various design alternatives with colleagues.