I am evaluating various tools for diagram generating of existing databases
on some smaller databases (9 tables or so) first.

The two I've tried so far are these:

http://dev.mysql.com/downloads/workbench/
http://www.sqlmaestro.com/download/#mysql

Both _seem_ robust and cosmetically polished, but feel to me lacking the
most obvious and key component of the whole purpose to make an EER diagram.

I don't understand in workbench, why it creates new keys for me on existing
tables. Maestro doesn't do this nonsense. It isn't the tools business where
I have keys, it only needs to be concerned with what links to what -- that I
tell it to. It's further exacerbated by the fact that the documentation
indicates these aren't even REAL keys, they are cosmetic only! WTF? Why add
confusion guys?

1. Neither one seem to be smart enough to automatically know that columns of
the same name should be linked, and furthermore they should be linked from
all tables to the one where that column name is the PK. my tables don't have
true InnoDB FKs setup. And some tables are MYISAM (as they're significantly
faster). But I do use keys and I do have sane naming conventions, so I don't
understand why they can't use the names, and if there are multiple tables
(for some unlikely reason) then just prompt me which table to use.

Which leads me to the second and third problems...

So I manually have started to draw the connections, but:

2. How can I make the wires stick to a column on the left or right edge, so
that I can have a direct visual link between the columns. Right now, it
seems they float around the edge of the table box. That's sort of useless
isn't it? it's like saying, "well, something in this table points to
something in that table".?! I would think that two programs with such high
version numbers would have this feature. Maybe I'm missing a configuration
or some way I'm supposed to do it?

3. Some of my databases point to tables in other databases on the same
server. It would be useful if I could make a wire that indicates this.

Are there other (better) options out there for this? I really don't want to
do this in Visio or make a printout of the table boxes and tape string to my
walls to visualize all the databases, tables and columns.

-Daevid.


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