Re: Is there a better way than pen and paper?

Hi Seth,

Seth Brewer schrieb:
> This may be a very common question and if so I appologize up front, but I
> did search around and I found very little.
>
> I have been doing all of my database designing (albeit that's not a ton)
> with [literally] pen and paper. Not even nice paper, just ruled-line
> notebook paper. (The pen's not that great either.) Is there a better way?
> I'm not looking for anything crazy like some tool that takes what ever
> monstrosity I've come up with and saves it as a complete Oracle DB. I just
> want something that will make nice diagrams which make sense to other human
> beings and look better than my chicken scratch.

You might think i did not read your posting carefully. But you actually do modelling like i did about 10 years ago. Then i started to use case tools and my life changed :-)
Please have a look on Sybase Power Designer. You can use it for different desgin levels (DB Design Model, Object Model and Physical Model). The 'DB Design Model' could be what you are looking for if you are talking with your customers busniess experts. The 'Physical Model' would be better if you want to discuss on a more technical level.

One of the most usefull features is its fantastic documentation facility. In addition, it is a very powerful implementation tool and you can use it to generate either scripts to generate your database structures or generate it directly within the database via ODBC. It is expensive but imo worth every cent.

There is a demo version available at
http://www.sybase.com/products/enterprisemodeling/powerdesigner Please mention the different packages. I think the 'Physical Architect' or the 'Data Architect' package would fit your needs.

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Mit freundlichen Grüßen / Best Regards
Michael Gast
SEPP MED GmbH