RECOMMEND: Extensible database design tool?

Anybody know of a database design tool (ala Oracle's Database Designer) that allows you to add attributes to its data structures?

For example, I'd like to add several pieces of descriptive meta-data to each table and column definition. I have a data warehouse-type app and I want to attach info to the table definition about the pattern and frequency of loads, indexrebuilds,  etc. Plus I'd like to add these fields to the definitions of the tables and columns:

  short_description	varchar2(60) -- for lists (can use Oracle's
				COMMENT feature for this)
  long_desc_HTML	varchar2(2000) -- HTML paragraph
  usage_notes_HTML	varchar2(2000) -- HTML paragraph

I'd prefer a tool that allows me to add these attributes and modifies its own front end to support them (dreaming?). I'd settle for one that just stores its data in the database so that I can add adjunct tables with my extra attributes and do one-to-one joins to get all of the data together.

I'd also like one that allows me to specify "domains" or "datatypes" for columns. For example, I want to define in one place what a "part_number" is, and then just define all of my part number columns as being of type "part_number". (Oracle's Database Designer actually does this! (due to the need to support RDB, but also appears to work for Oracle DBs). However, I want to attach more attributes to my domains, and ODD puts its designs into FILES. Also, it doesn't even generate COMMENT ON COLUMN statements to save column comments in the database.)

At this point, I'm considering rolling my own. Help!

Barry Schader
please copy replies to my e-mail: barry.schader_at_medtronic.com Received on Fri May 09 1997 - 00:00:00 CDT