Anyone know of a decent free DB schema reverse engineering tool?

Question

Looking for a tool that will automatically create a graphical representation of a MySQL DB schema from a live database, showing tables, columns, and relationships (an ER diagram). Ideally something that would run on OS X would be great but I'll take what I can get and run it on a different machine if necessary.

I checked Google and del.icio.us. Seems most products that do this are commercial. I guess they're expensive to develop?

MySQL has the Workbench but it costs extra for the reverse engineering features.

This open source tool SchemaSpy looks kind of promising, but maybe a little awkward to install and use. Before I dive into that, I thought I'd check whether anyone knows of something more "instant gratification."

Answer 1

Check out SQuirreL.

You need to right click the table and choose the option, 'Add to Graph'. Then it will open a new tab. After switching to that tab you will see the table represented in a box. Just right click the box and select 'Add all children', and 'Add all Parent'. It will include the complete hierarchy, with the Entity, and Relationships. So, you can say it would generate an ERD.

Hope this would help.

Answer 2

Look at dbdesigner think that's the name. It logs in if you have db login. And downloads and makes pretty. Do you have server login?

Or phpmyadmin the Php package has it on the db screens.