What is a good Visio Enterprise Architect replacement?

Question

I've been using Visio 2002/2003 Enterprise Architect to do my database schema design visually and then forward-generate the DDL to create the database.

I wanted to switch to Visio 2007, but while it does have database diagramming support, it doesn't have the ability to generate DDL. Bummer.

I am really disappointed because it seems like Microsoft has completely abandoned this feature. You can't do it in Visual Studio (that I've found). You can sorta do it with SQL Server Management Studio if you insert database diagrams into your database, but any edits to the schema immediately take effect.

Has anyone found a good program to do this? I'm hoping to find one that is free and can generate DDL/SQL for SQL Server.

Solution 1

Unfortunately, I have recently faced the same problem, hoping that MS would provide a new version of Visio Enterprise Architect since I have used it FOREVER to do ERDs/database design. Since this does not seem to be forthcoming from them however, I have been forced to research other tools. The ones I checked out included the following:

• Embarcadero ER/Studio
• Visual Paradigm DB Visual Architect
• Altova DatabaseSpy
• Dezign for Databases
• Sybase PowerDesigner

Also, I tried to check out DevGEMS Data Modeler but kept getting "the setup files are corrupted" after downloading it. I never considered ERWin as the interface seems too old school/legacy plus it is too expensive. Just when I had almost given up all hope of finding a well-rounded but [relatively] cheap alternative I came across ModelRight. I find it curious that I haven't heard more about this company given that their product is EXCELLENT and inexpensive (under $1000 for multi-DB support or under $500 for a single DB type) compared to other high-end DB modeling tools. Further, the company was founded by one of the first developers to work on ERwin (see their company's "About" page for more info).

To make a long story short, if you want to save yourself a day's worth of research on this subject, check out ModelRight FIRST and go from there. BTW, for full disclosure - I have no affiliation with the ModelRight company! ;^)

P.S. - From what I can tell currently, VS 2010 isn't going to offer a full DB modeling environment but only enough to support the Entity Framework which I am not currently sold on (especially having spent the time to roll my own ORM layer).

Solution 2

This functionality is only available in the "for Enterprise Architects"-edition of Visio. This edition is apparently not sold as a stand-alone product, but it is included in MSDN Premium.

See this article on Office Online: What happened to the Generate and Update commands on the Database menu?

Solution 3

Not free, but very good and simple to use: Dezign for Databases

Draw your model and then you can generate DDL for lots of different databases.

Solution 4

I use Sparks Enterprise Architect. It can create the basic by taking all your database with an ODBC than you can design and reverse change too. It's not free.

Solution 5

Oh, and DBDesigner is pretty good, and free.

http://www.fabforce.net/downloads.php

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Comments

[George Silva]

This is a nice software!

[Jon Crowell]

It appears to only work with MySQL.

[TomO]

Sparx Enterprise Architect also has a free importer that can take your visio diagrams and import them as models. This way you wont have to redo any of your work. On that note you can also connect it directly to the database (via an odbc connection) and reverse engineer it back into EA

[Holistic Developer]

By "Enterprise Architect" are you referring to the Sparx product?

[Holistic Developer]

The version of Visio known as "Visio for Enterprise Architects" was last updated in 2005 and is based on Visio 2003 under the hood. So, you don't get any of the improvements that were made to Visio in the 2007 or 2010 versions.