Suggested DB Reverse Engineering tool...

[Vikas Rajput]

Hi,

We have a SQL Server 2000 based system which carries 1000+ DBs
primarily setup as:
1 security DB,
1 transaction management DB,
1 message support DB, and
many many development DBs (as a suite of 3 DBs)

Now, one thing missing is the Data Model. :-)
Am slightly new to this area and what am looking for is some Open
Source/freeware tool/utility which can read through the DBs (dont mind
if it does one DB at a time) and get some ligitemate DB Model
(physical/logical) out. I have heard of MSVisio (with some APIs
probably) but havent got chance to put my hands on it. DBDesigner4 is
an option but it creates plain report with table and columns with no
depiction for relations etc. Any help is much appreciated..

[Erland Sommarskog]

Re: Suggested DB Reverse Engineering tool...

Vikas Rajput (vikasrajp@gmai l.com) writes:

We have a SQL Server 2000 based system which carries 1000+ DBs
primarily setup as:
1 security DB,
1 transaction management DB,
1 message support DB, and
many many development DBs (as a suite of 3 DBs)
>
Now, one thing missing is the Data Model. :-)
Am slightly new to this area and what am looking for is some Open
Source/freeware tool/utility which can read through the DBs (dont mind
if it does one DB at a time) and get some ligitemate DB Model
(physical/logical) out. I have heard of MSVisio (with some APIs
probably) but havent got chance to put my hands on it. DBDesigner4 is
an option but it creates plain report with table and columns with no
depiction for relations etc. Any help is much appreciated..

If you want a full-blown data-modelling tool, the prime competitors
on the market are PowerDesigner (from Sybase), ERWin (from Computer
Associates) and Embrocadero. But open source and freeware they are
not. I only know about the pricing for PowerDesigner, and it's certainly
expensive, least of all if you only want support for physical data
modelling. (The price includes a bunch of other types of models.)

Red Gate has SQLDoc which also has a price tag, but a lot smaller than
PowerDesigner. But this is not a modelling tool, and may not give
you that much more than DBDesigner4 does (I'm not acquainted with
DBDesigner4.)

ApexSQL has a tool similar to Red Gate's, Apex SQLDoc.


--
Erland Sommarskog, SQL Server MVP, esquel@sommarsk og.se

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