RE: ERD generation tool

ERWin's not much better. Has some better modeling capability as you might guess, but has some VERY annoying quirks too. You also need to drill down endlessly when doing a compare and I have seen it see two exact tables (even case being the same) and see them as different. The DO have a MATCH button that I would SUPPOSE allows you to re-align them, but I would not know for sure as I get Dr. Watson's whenever I press it and the whole thing crashes!

I had a nice BUG last week only. Generated scripts for the model, ran them on the db, then ran a compare from the model to the db. Darn thing came up with differences....

Furthermore, I find that if you work from the Logical Model (like I do), the changes are not equally presented to the physical model.... (ie name change./datatype change) and its NOT consistent with this behavior either!

It has a report builder, but it doesn't report on datatypes entered on the Logical side (even though the datatype on the physical MAY be different) = therefore you can't run any consistency reports between the Logical and Physical models.

I have been using ERWin both as a modeling tool and a change repository for the model. I like to run several reports against a model (I call them the Sanity Checks Reports).... you know, make sure that all columns named the same (ie DESCRIPTION) are of the same datatype, length, etc.....

Anyhow, I can rant and rant.

ERWin's BIGGEST Annoyance is my book is that there is no UNDO feature and it is rather easy to accidentally drop and drag either a relationship or field when re-aligning the model...... ugh....

I wish we could get together a group and benchmark some relatively unknown but stable modeling tool who's maker will listen to the DBA community and put their name in the market (IE. give them market share) in exchange for giving our community a tool that would actually work for us and work well!

Rant over now.

Please continue.......

>
> * It cannot handle obejcts (CLOBs, BLOBs, ...) that are not stored inline.
> If you place CLOBs in a different tablesapce form the rest of the row, you
> will have to manually manipulate the DDL.
>
> * It has no schema-schema comparision capabilities, only schema-model.
>
> * Examining the results of schema-model comparision is extremely awkward,
> time consuming, and aggravating. One has to continually "drill down" in a
> miniscule window using the "Windows Explorer" type interface to see anything
> meaningful.
>
> There are some other significant deficiencies also. I talked to them about
> all these and more. What I got was the same answer that I got two years ago
> also. "We'll put it on the enhancement request list." or "We've been
> intending to do that."
> Personally, I think that packages have been around long enough that a
> multi-thousand dollar per seat tool should be able to handle them by now!
>
> Unfortunately, I don't know of any great modeling tool right now. Designer
> does everything, but definitely has some quirks. If you use another RDBS,
> it probably won't handle it well. In addition, it wants to do things its
> own way, not your way. Some also say it has the world's most obtuse
> interface. Simply sit someone that is familiar with modeling, but
> unfamiliar with Designer, down in front of the GUI and see how long it takes
> them to generate a readable ER diagram! (To make this "fair", compared to
> other tools, don't give them any documentation other than the online help,
> but start it up and connect it to a database before you turn it over). It
> could be days, perhaps weeks!
>
> Don Granaman
> [OraSaurus]
>
 

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