Tool to draw db-charts?

S

Spejsman

New Member
Hi all,

New here and first posting.

I'm in eed of a tool that can draw db-charts out of a db-schema (or similliar). We just inherrited a system with almost no documentation (no news really ;-)).

Anyone here ever heard of such a handy tool? Preferably free ;).

Otherwise we face a huge job trying to figure out how everything is connected....

It's an OpenEdge 10 version DB.

Hoping for help....
 
There's probably other options out there, but the Data Administration tool has a Table Relations report. Any tool will be limited I'd have thought to the quality of the naming conventions of the database. If the primary key on table 1 is named differently to the foreign key in table 2, how is a tool meant to find the link?
 
Just added DF parsing functionality to Okapi, this will load the database in an UML model that can easily be visualized using either an open-source editor or import it to another commercial UML tool as it's pure XMI.

I'm going to do some changes to use stereotypes to handle all the table/fields/indexes properties specific to Progress DB but if you are only looking for the table structure and relations I guess I can just release a new version in the meantime.

However as you've been already told the processing of inferring the table relations depends heavily on how well the database was designed, name and data type of fields from the primary key index in the parent table should match those of the foreign-key index in the child table... but even for a database that follows the naming conventions there will be relations that you'll miss, take the order for instance it can have billing and delivery address but the fields would probably be named bill_addr and ship_addr, can't both be named addr_id :)

If you're interested to give it a try let me know and I'll try to build a new version over the weekend...
http://www.ganimede.ro/cms/open-source/okapi/


 
There are several options.
I think there is a product called ERWin that will read a Progress schema. I have no personal experience with it.
Phil Magnay published a plugin for Enterprise Architect on PSDN that will read a .df.
ABL2UML ( http://www.oehive.org/ABL2UML ) includes a piece that will read a schema and build a model in Enterprise Architect. We are in the process of revising this so that it can be used separately, but it wouldn't be hard to just snip out that piece from the existing code.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top