[wellylug] datamodels

[michael at diaspora.gen.nz]

"Brenda (Wallace) O'Hagan" writes:
>can anyone recommend a linux app for drawing datamodels?

Quoting Philip Greenspun
(http://slashdot.org/interviews/00/04/27/107235.shtml):

| The tool that we use for data modeling and schema management is ...
| GNU Emacs! E-R diagrams are basically useless once a data model gets
| beyond a certain size. And for smart people they aren't all that
| useful for small and medium-sized data models.

More seriously, the latest cool tool I've seen for drawing E-R
diagrams (other than the usual, Dia, ER/Win, etc.) is the SQL Fairy,
http://sqlfairy.sf.net/, which is a set of Perl modules for arbitrarily
translating database schemas; eg MySQL to Oracle; Oracle to XML; some
database to pseudo-ER diagrams with GraphViz or GD.

The distribution includes a set of command line tools for performing
the transformation, including one that should take a schema dump in a
SQL file and produce a diagram.
    -- michael.