What GOOD tools are available for generating ERD from a SQL Server Database?

Question

I am trying to generate an Entity Relationship Diagram from an existing MS SQLServer 2005 database. What tools are available? Specifically,I am not only interested in ERD's more directly I am looking for a tool to help quickly learning and analysing a medium size (schema wise not really row wise) database structure.

Solution 1

I can see that this post is quite old and MS SQL Server Management Studio might have not had this feature back then! Though as far as I know with SQL Server 2012 you can generate the ER diagrams by taking a few simple steps listed below:

1. MS SQL Server management Studio > File menu > "Connect Object Explorer"
2. Choose your Database node and expand it. under this node you'll find a sub-node called "Database Diagrams"
3. Right click on "Database Diagrams" > "New Database Diagram" > Add tables that you wish to see their columns, relationships, ...

Solution 2

The database reverse engineering feature of microsoft Visio are excellent for pulling the schema out of a database and developing from there. I'd investigate that avenue if you haven't already.

Solution 3

I've used Visio and had some good results with that. One thing I do though too is to use the visual designers (Database Diagrams) built into SQL Server GUI. When you drop the tables in there, it automatically includes the foreign keys. You can just include the tables you want at this point to focus in.

All of these tools though anticipate the foreign keys pre-existing.

Solution 4

I've been happy with DBDesigner4.

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