I've recently switched to Linux on my work machine and, new to the Linux desktop environment, I'd like to find a decent ERD tool for database design. Booting back into my Windows partition every time I need to create a diagram is going to get unpleasant quickly. I looked at Dia, but didn't see any DB tools - only UML, networking, etc.
Anyone have any recommendations? For what it's worth, I'm using Ubuntu (Hardy Heron).
Thanks.
No recommendations as such, but,
You might want to broaden your search to Eclipse plugins such as http://eclipse-erd.sourceforge.net/.
Apart from that there are various ERD tools you have to pay for like Data Architect.
Check out SQL Developer: [http://sqldeveloper.solyp.com/download/index.html]
As a stop gap, I've installed DBDesigner via Wine (I should have just done that first) since that's what my Windows developers are using, but will look at both of these as well. The Eclipse plugin would be ideal if it's decent.
Thanks.
I'd definitely recommend Gliffy.com for simple ER diagrams, it's an online flash based tool, so cross platform. I wrote a small review of it a week ago.
Mmm I think the Linux version of MySQL Workbench is out for download at: http://forums.mysql.com/read.php?3,56274,56274#msg-56274
You can see the pre-release announcement here: http://dev.mysql.com/workbench/?p=138
They are still in alpha, but judging from the windows version this is gonna be "THE" ERD tool.
PD: For the ubuntu part, you are in luck, they say that ubuntu is "our Linux distro of choice".
Look at Oracle JDeveloper (freeware). It is pure Java, so it will run on any platform. It will work against any database that you can connect to via JDBC. It builds database diagrams (and lots of other diagrams - it happens to be a complete Java IDE).
It works with a concept of "offline database objects" stored in XML files. So if you have existing database objects, you start by capturing them into JDeveloper and then build your diagram. If you make changes to your offline objects, you can "reconcile" them back into your database, either as new objects (DROP-REPLACE) or as modifications (ALTER).
Download at http://www.oracle.com/technology/software/products/jdev/index.html
MySQL just officially released the alpha of "MySQL Workbech for linux":
See the announcement here: MySQL Workbench 5.1 Alpha for Linux available.
For a generic (vendor independent) tool, you can try dia (I prefer the dia-gnome package). There are also some plugins for generating the SQL files.
MySQL Workbench is available on MacOS, Fedora, Ubuntu, Windows.
WB 5.1 is focused on Data Modeling (replacing Mike Zinner’s popular DBDesigner product).
WB 5.2 (coming April 2009) will include a ground up rewrite of the MySQL Query Browser.
I had bad experience with Workbench on Linux in the past and wish it got better now.
I am quite happy with SchemaBank these days 'cause they are purely web-based. You drop them a few bucks every month and they host your diagram for private / public sharing. Usual stuff like forward / reverse engineering, alter scripts, etc are all supported.
You can try ORM Designer http://www.orm-designer.com Tool is similar to DBDesigner, but has much more functions and is under everyday development.