Re: Any database diagramming tools out there ?

> Where are looking for a tool which will show the relationships between
> a table and all its related objects such as triggers, views,
> procedures, etc.
>
> We already have TOAD which shoes these relationships in a tabular form
> but we are after a utility which would have the ability to show these
> relationship in something similar to an E-R diagram so that it could
> be printed off and given to project teams.
>
> We are interested in any recommendations anyone in the Oracle
> community would have.

The success you will get with automatic tools will depend on how well your database is designed and to some extent, how much you are willing to pay. If you don't have some fairly consistent naming conventions and incorporate lots of referencial constraints etc, many of the tools struggle to make sense of the data and their relationships.

If your database design is reasonably sane, uses consistent column names, good constraint definitions etc, then some of the open source tools are pretty good. For example sqlfairy can do a pretty good job. I also like tools that can generate something like a graphviz 'dot' file as you can then edit that file to improve how the diagrams are rendered.

On the whole, most of these tools, even the commercial ones, only give average results and the results degrade quickly as the complexity of the schema increases. One problem is how to represent the diagrams in a useful manner i.e. in a size that will fit on a screen or can be printed. Often, you will get this huge diagram that results in you spending hours scrolling left/right and up/down and never really getting a good overview. Being able to edit the diagrams to produce more meaningful smaller diagrams is often useful or just do the diagrams and forget about automated generation.

Tim

-- 
tcross (at) rapttech dot com dot au