Re: ER/Win vs Designer/2000 - Which is better? -Reply

>>> Roger Snowden <rsnowden@IHateSpam.com> 04/02/97 08:27am wrote>>> <snip> >ER/win ... >For example, a primary key on a child, the concatenation of two columns, A and B. >Then, the tool generated another index on A alone, since it was a foreign key. >The second index is pointless, of course. Stuff like that. You have to review >the generation scripts carefully and be willing to blow away a schema and start over. >It has pretty good support for multiple dbms products, and I have used it to support >Oracle, MS SQL Server, Sybase and Access. No sweat on any of them. <snip> >D2k does logical modelling, which ERWin does *not*. ERWin is a physical modelling >tool only. D2k also does reverse engineering and - get this - allows you to make >incremental changes to a database. It will detect the differences between two schemas >and generate a script that will alter one to match the other. That means you can do >ongoing maintenance with the tool. With ERWin, if you want to add a column to a table, >the tool generates a script to recreate the table. <snip> >It also does process modelling and has some code generation tools for C++ and VB, >etc. I haven't messed with that part of it yet. ---- Well, if you carefully select the schema generation options in ERwin (and there are many from which to choose), you will not generate any indexes you did not expect. Generate FK indexes, or not, your choice. Useful if you want the index, but not the constraint, e.g. Also, ERwin DOES do logical modeling. Earlier versions had a klunky method of dealing with the Logical vs Physical models (Subject areas and Displays), but Logic Works has addressed this with their latest versions. ERwin also Reverse Engineers, and can generate a difference list from schema listings, other ER/win files, or directly from the database. ERwin --does-- require ODBC to connect to your database of choice. There are versions of ERwin available which will generate VB and PB code, and I heard a rumor that a version was in the works for Delphi (but this was well before Borland's latest problems). -- Sky +-------(southwel@smtpgw.maricopa.gov)-------+- Maricopa County -+ | Schuyler L. Southwell | Attorney's Office | | Data Management Consultant | 301 W. Jefferson | | Voice: 602-506-1111 **** FAX: 602-506-3970 | Phoenix, AZ 85003 | +--------------------------------------------+-------------------+