Any decent free database design tools?

[Merad]

I've been thinking about a program I'd like to work on in my spare time this summer, which will need a SQLite database. It's been a while since I did any DB stuff, so are there tools out there that can help with the design and hopefully exporting scripts to create the DB?

 

[Hmongkeysauce]

MySQL Workbench should be sufficient for what you need.

 

[sze5003]

Mysql should be free and is usually free with glasfish server or on its own. You can also check out visual studio if you want to use those tools it has for sql.

 

[Train]

http://sqliteman.com/

 

[Ken g6]

I just started doing some sqlite myself. SQLite Manager for Firefox is fairly good, although it doesn't seem to understand a table with a multiple column primary key. (Maybe that's bad practice?)

 

[Cerb]

I just started doing some sqlite myself. SQLite Manager for Firefox is fairly good, although it doesn't seem to understand a table with a multiple column primary key. (Maybe that's bad practice?)

No, it's not bad practice. It's just that you're trying to make a decent database, most likely, while most uses of SQLite are for columnar data stores, with transaction safety, in a portable format. Even SQLite performs perfectly fine with composite keys. With any sane DB that breaks simple hierarchies, and is at least 1NF, natural composite keys pop up all the time.

I would also recommend MySQL Workbench, if just for being able to do it in a ERD style. I find there are often subtle problems that pop out as obvious, that way, unrelated to structural correctness, which is just as easy to deal with in code. You might need to finesse the scripts it makes, occasionally, but most a MySQL SQL script for creating a DB should be the same or about the same as for SQLite.

 

[Ken g6]

Even SQLite performs perfectly fine with composite keys.

Yes, it's SQLite Manager that gets confused. I try to delete a row (in the GUI), but it thinks that only one column is the primary key. So it delets all rows with that value. I should file a bug report. :hmm: Edit: Someone beat me to it.

 

[beginner99]

I've been thinking about a program I'd like to work on in my spare time this summer, which will need a SQLite database. It's been a while since I did any DB stuff, so are there tools out there that can help with the design and hopefully exporting scripts to create the DB?

Are you looking for an ERD tool or just a GUI that creates the tables? In case of ERD and assuming this is a not too complex one man project:

Use paper and pencil.

 

[Merad]

Are you looking for an ERD tool or just a GUI that creates the tables? In case of ERD and assuming this is a not too complex one man project:

Use paper and pencil.

I want something that does the former so I don't have to do the latter...

 

[chieudieuhoa.vn]

MySQL Workbench should be sufficient for what you need.

Mysql workbench is the best for choice:twisted:

http://chieudieuhoa.vn

 

[Cerb]

Mysql workbench is the best for choice:twisted:

Except for all the crashing, and the poorly-implemented print feature. But, it's free, doesn't screw anything basic up, and you can use the model ASAP, which is all nice, and there are pay applications that can't even get those done well (if you call relationships relations, FI, when relations already have a 45-year-old accepted definition in this context, why should I expect any knowledge or thought, much less correctness, on your part, for any deeper implementation details? Then ignore the existence and usefulness of any constraints, composite keys existing, and...).

Also, it can import, so those >= 5NF schemas with a gazillion tables can be started in a text editor or shell script, and then finished in the visual editor, if you like. Not that I would ever be lazy like that, and then turn around and use the schema in Postgres, or anything...

 

[mrjminer]

I haven't used MySQL Workbench it in a year or so since I've started switching over to ASP and EF, but worked pretty well for me.

It's a pretty good all-in-one tool for being free; I don't remember anything in it I needed to do that I couldn't. I highly recommend it

The only frustrations I remember having with it are:

1. having to rename some foreign keys (which have to be named uniquely across tables) because the program created it based off column-name only (you can change them manually in the program without a problem, though).

2. triggers not being loaded for editing when using a live DB

3. compatibility issues that caused models not to load, but note this only happened once or twice with a couple of models I made in one of the first versions when trying to load it into the later versions on different computers (old versions, of course, are available for download though so it wasn't too big of a deal)

4. seemed a little "cramped" when working every once in a while because you are forced to have at least one tab open at all times in the main editor (ie: try to "X" out of the only tab open and it just opens another one). Maybe just personal preference, but I like to be able to completely close things I'm not using at the time.

Note that these things might have all changed / been fixed by now since it's been 1-1.5 years