Database Design Tools on Linux

Scott Adams (the author of the Dilbert cartoons) once put Database Administration into the category of Top 3 Most Boring Jobs. Maybe this explains why there aren't too many database design tools available for Linux.

You can find any number of GUI screen builders, loads of UML modeling gizmos and enough Java class browsers to keep even the busiest bean-builder happy. But if you want something to produce an ERD (Entity Relationship Diagram), produce logical and physical data models and generate DDL to produce databases and you'll not find the shelves of your local software store exactly bulging with choice.

Any tools you do find will cost you money : and in some cases I mean "serious money" !!! Even on Windows there are only a limited number of tools available, and again these are in the "Large Enterprise" price range in most cases (there are a few tools I may look at if I finally give up on my Linux evaluation which I may be able to afford but not that many.

OK, if you are still with me after those first three paragraphs you are probably some sort of "database junkie". So hopefully the rest of this column will be helpful for you.

Data Architect
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The first tool I came across was Data Architect from http://www.thekompany.com : there is an evaluation version available and the download version costs $60. The folks who write this tool are also involved in the development of the (free) UNIX ODBC project (http://www.unixodbc.org) and any money they make from Data Architect is also used to support the development of this.

So a while ago I downloaded this tool and managed to reverse engineer a simple database after struggling with the ODBC setup for a while. It doesn't do a lot of what I'd like, but it couldn't hurt to support the development, so I stumped up my $60 as an investment in the future.

Support for DB2 seems to be ahead of any of the other big database vendors. There's a reasonable recent version out (V3.1) and my first impression of this is that it is more buggy than previously. I'm going to have to raise some issues with the developers.

DB Visual Architect
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The next tool I can across is DB Visual Architect from http://www.visual-paradigm.com : again there is an evaluation version available and a single user licence costs $699 (yes you did read that correctly : that is one dollar short of seven HUNDRED dollars and you can be sure I won't be making a $700 donation to the project unless it meets all my requirements ).

The thing that interested me about this was that as well as a stand-alone product there are also plugin versions for most of the major IDEs : the one that interests me most is Eclipse, which I'm really starting to like a lot.

Downloaded the evaluation copy and after a couple of tries got it starting in both standalone and Eclipse. Discovered I needed different licence key files for the two environments. Also noticed that the "workspace" for the two environments was different (by default) : it appears you can open projects from one in the other (at least I could open something created in the Eclipse version in the standalone : I couldn't find a way to open an existing project in the Eclipse version).

So I tried reverse engineering my DB2 database. Most of the tables in the diagram had no columns in them. Raised a fault and two days later had a fix. Next thing I noticed was that most of the foreign keys (RI) were missing from the diagram : just opened a problem on this too. It also doesn't seem to handle more esoteric objects like sequences / triggers (maybe not even views).

So unless things look up in the next few days I think my $700 will be going elsewhere.

Oh, and the other thing : their problem ticketing system keeps sending me a message every few hours thanking me for raising the initial problem. Seems like they have a problem with that, which they are trying to track down.

The general impression I get is that this tool is designed by application developers, and is intended for app developers who want to produce the occasional data modeler, rather than being aimed at full time database people.

Other Eclipse Plugins
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I had hoped that I'd find an ERD tool in the Eclipse Modeling Framework. However all the tools seem to be aimed at application programmers. As I said, plenty of UML and Java browsers but really nothing specifically for us database folks.

Other Tools
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I've been looking at some of the Rational Tools (running on Windows). I read that IBM are currently reworking the Rational tools and merging them with Websphere tools. Since Websphere is based on Eclipse, and IBM is very Linux friendly, I'm hopeful that this could provide something in the future I can use.

Maybe Going Windows ?
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So it looks like I'm at the end of the line for Linux-based tools at the moment. I'm going to start looking at some Windows based tools as well. As well as the big (expensive) players like CA (ERWin), Sybase (PowerDesigner : also rebadged by Quest), IBM Rational (XDE and Rational Rose) and Embarcadero (DR-Studio) there are a number of other tools on the market. One that caught my eye is DeZign, and I'm thinking of giving this a try.

Watch this space ...