visual inspection of a database

Hi, I have an Informix-SE installed on a linux machine and I have a new database created by somebody else and that I need to understand the relations between its tables and fields. Is there a visual way of seeing these tables and fields in a way like inheritance tree or something like that? In this sceneario a tool will dive in the database, visit each table and report the relations graphically. I know there is a tool called "dbschema" but I do not think it has a visual output. thanks, ersin -----------== Posted via Deja News, The Discussion Network ==---------- http://www.dejanews.com/ Search, Read, Discuss, or Start Your Own

ERwin by Platinum can do what you want but it is *expensive* for an individual or project with a small budget to buy. Even with ERwin, I've found that if either a consistent naming convention is not used for domains (i.e., employee id is always represented as "emp_id", versus sometimes as person_id) or if primary and foreign keys are not explicitly defined in the DDL, then ERwin does not produce an adequate diagram, and a significant amount of manual analysis is necessary. I'm sure that there are cheaper tools out there, and I hope that someone else responds to this post and supplies some references to these tools. Ersin Beyret wrote: > Hi, > > I have an Informix-SE installed on a linux machine and I have a new database > created by somebody else and that I need to understand the relations between > its tables and fields. Is there a visual way of seeing these tables and > fields in a way like inheritance tree or something like that? In this > sceneario a tool will dive in the database, visit each table and report the > relations graphically. > > I know there is a tool called "dbschema" but I do not think it has a visual > output. > > thanks, > ersin > > -----------== Posted via Deja News, The Discussion Network ==---------- > http://www.dejanews.com/ Search, Read, Discuss, or Start Your Own