Re: CASE tools for data dictionaries

>>>> Andrej Falout <afalout@xtra.co.nz> 09/01/99 01:36AM >>> >In article <37CB3908.E25B2ED6@iol14.com>, wraper@iol14.com says... >> I would suggest strongly that you invest in a copy of ErWin from Platinum >> Technologies. > >I disagree. I found this tool to be the biggest nightmare piece of >software in my life for the long long time. I really don't know where to >start. On larger systems I agree, on little systems it's OK [cutting] >> The product can either read the output from dbschema, > >Only on paper. From 9 out of ten Informix schemas with some level of >complexity, it will fail with choice of error messages ranging from ones >that there support never heard about, to the ones that they have no fix >for other then manually commenting out offending parts of schemaa. It seems to get confused with Informix named PK/FK names [cutting] >> Once it reads the schema, it will >> generate a very good Entity Relationship Diagram. > >Completely useless jungle of overlayed tables that will take days just to >make visible. And if you intend to infer relationships and/or primary >keys, forget it, it will take days on anything larger then 200 tables, >and it will look hanged, so after you stop rebooting it and it finishes, >you will find on your screen such a nightmare that you will not know >where to begin. Unless your database breaks into separate sub-systems then the entity diagram is virtually useless. >> Further, you can use the >> Logical and Physical documentation components of ErWin for full database >> documentation. > >Yes, I suspect you can do that. Since I never managed to do aanything >useful with ERwin, I did not try to document it. HTML and hyperlinks do just as good a job. [cutting] >Unfortunately, I do not have a better solution to offer you. I just want >to tell you that out there, there is one person that regret his decision >to buy this thing, and that this don't happen to him very often. I like Maestro. It's Informix support is not particularly brillant but it gets the job done Paul Watson WF Software Ltd Tel: +44 1436 674729 Fax: +44 1436 678729 www.wfsoftware.com/informix # If you broke it, hide the evidence ********************************************************************** This email and any files transmitted with it are confidential and intended solely for the use of the individual or entity to whom they are addressed. If you have received this email in error please notify the system manager. This footnote also confirms that this email message has been swept by MIMEsweeper for the presence of computer viruses. www.mimesweeper.com **********************************************************************