For Windows platform: which Dia plugin or App to simplify design and documentation of small Database Applications ?

[Paul Smith <paul smithy987 gmail com>]

@Michael Ross

Thanks for your help.  My initial post on 23/10 said I had selected HSQLDB as the target RDBMS.  In response to my question "I am looking for a tool to simplify design and documentation of small

> Database Applications, ideally starting creation of the ER Diagram, from

> which the SQL DDL is generated to create the tables in the target RDBMS."

Andre replied: What about MySQL Workbench?

Until then I assumed from the name it supported MySQL only, but then looked up MySQL WB in Wikipedia and read that from ver 5.2.41 released only 3 months ago, it supported a few other RDBMS, and 'any ODBC compliant db', Delving further, I read its minimum hardware requirement stated as more powerful than my Nettop, and a review dated 2009 run on a laptop with 2.5GHz CPU said WB was 'dog slow but best there is'. (a comment said its fast on Mac, slow on PC)  Spent a while perusing the WB User Manual and saw no mention of HSQLDB. That was the reason I asked if WB was worth persuing further.  If it won't run on my platform, or I am mistaken in thinking WB supports ERD-to-SQL for HSQLDB, then its a red herring for me.

@Andre

As per my reply above, I don't think I am confusing a RDBMS with a "a tool to simplify design and documentation of small Database Applications", although as Michael seems to think I was asking about the MySQL RDBMS as opposed to the MySQL WB you suggested I might consider, maybe the rest of my post should have been clearer, or, it may be MySQL WB still does only support MySQL RDBMS, hence Michael assuming I was interested in MySQL RDBMS.   As stated in my last post, when looking for a (Open Source) DB Engine for my (low-powered) platform, I had ruled out MySQL for the reasons given.  It was some time back I searched for comparisons of Open Source RDBMS engines, and seemed to remember reading somewhere MySQL also needed meatier HW than I have.  You ask what type of configuration. I didn't mention it as didn't think it mattered in context of 'tool to simplify design...', but my project is limited to non-web standalone db on single-user nettop.   Thanks for your insight on MySQL anyway. Interesting your MySQL Server runs on 850MHz Athlon with 512Mb RAM. Does it also run WB ?  As WB support for 'any ODBC compliant db' was only added 3 months ago - is that why you suggested I consider WB ?

@Thomas Harding

Thanks for your input.  The Tutorial in Steffan's link gave a clear guide how to get started using UML - except the links to the tutorial dia & sql files are broken.  Its just that UML seems overly complex compared to the far simpler Chen notation of 1:1, 1:n, m:n notation, that I found perfectly sufficient in the past.  Also, my last reply asked if, rather than all users having to 'reinvent the wheel', are there not predefined 'typemap' files supporting all relevant features of target DB, in this case HSQLDB, users can download ?

You recommend Postgres as a better engine.  Having read articles comparing the candidates, that was my first choice (I was impressed with the User Manual), but I read it requires more powerful hardware than I have and has good community help, so HSQLDB was 2nd choice.

My project is small, about 20 tables, and for the Forward Engineering, need contain just small sample data, so it may not place much load on any ERD design tool.