Re Data Modeling Note to Double Echo...

Timmy! Is that you? Seriously dude, I did read your post. But lets get real here. How many situations did you walk in to where you had a clean slate? Most tended to be a clean slate for a new DB, however you still had to pull in the data from an existing data source. As to your point, what's the good of drawing pretty pictures if you can't get the DDL from them? Hint: Thats why you build a data model. Its a visual cue that you can use to derive the DDL and the physical structures. Oh and on the reverse engineering side. As many have already pointed out. Data Models get dated quickly. Being able to reverse engineer and update an existing model is very important. Especially if your doing agile development. Or have a real application that has a multi-year lifespan that includes multiple phased upgrades and enhancements. You're right. I won't knitpick you. You're not to quick on the uptake. Some tools are worth while. Pen and Paper? Aka white boarding? Great for knocking out a rough idea, but then you need to transfer it to something more durable. And that's the point. If you're going to use pencil and paper, why don't you just break out Visio? At least they can read an ODBC source, albeit not get any key information straight. But hey! What do I know? ;-) -G _________________________________________________________________ MSN Shopping has everything on your holiday list. Get expert picks by style, age, and price. Try it! http://shopping.msn.com/content/shp/?ctId=8000,ptnrid=176,ptnrdata=200601&tcode=wlmtagline