Good tool to visualise database schema

Question

Are there any good tools for visualising a pre-existing database schema  I m using MySQL if it matters   I m currently using MySQL Workbench to process an SQL create script dump  but it s clunky  slow and a manual process to drag all the tables about  which would be okay if it wasn t so slow

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I m start to create own Perl script based on SQL  Translator module  GraphViz   Here are first results

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on Mac OS X you can use Sequel Pro

User · Answer

I found SchemaSpy quite good - you have to run the script every time schema changes but it is not so big deal   As pointed out in the comments there is also a GUI for it   Another nice tool is SchemaCrawler

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I looked for a long time for a decent  and preferably free  tool for linux and found this java application that is quite good  finally      http   sqldeveloper solyp com   Being Java it is cross-platform  I run it on Linux with no issues  and it will connect to any database you can get a JDBC driver for   ie  pretty much any database   It is quite easy to import your database and get a visual  ERM  of the database schema   The auto-layout feature is good as well  but note that it is not done automatically and you need to click the  automatic layout  button after importing your objects into the diagram   The application is also a pretty good generic database administration browsing tool   As one small example  I use it instead of pgadmin for some base development work because of simple niceties like the column width of SQL query results automatically sizing to fit content  which drives me crazy in pgadmin

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A different approach  but if you re using Ruby on Rails try RailRoad  http   railroad rubyforge org

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Have you tried the arrange   auto arrange function in MySQL Workbench   It may save you from manually moving the tables around

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I would recommend Toad data modeller

User · Answer

DeZign for Databases might be interesting for you  You can reverse engineer and modify existing databases  Has got an auto-layout function and diagram layout is not meshed up when synchronizing your data model with the database

User · Answer

I would recommend Toad data modeller

User · Answer

I found SchemaSpy quite good - you have to run the script every time schema changes but it is not so big deal   As pointed out in the comments there is also a GUI for it   Another nice tool is SchemaCrawler

User · Answer

I m start to create own Perl script based on SQL  Translator module  GraphViz   Here are first results

User · Answer

Adminer  formerly phpMinAdmin   the web application for managing MySQL databases  draws simple diagram    The software itself is similiar to phpMyAdmin  but has more features  its lightweight and it comes in single PHP file

User · Answer

When you say visualize the database schema  are you referring to a text-document of all your tables  sprocs  etc   or are you referring to a visual representation of your schema and dependencies    I know you mentioned MySQL  and it is very possible that it is supported now  but I am not sure   but RedGate has a number of tools that make that pretty simple  It s SQL Doc program can take your entire database and create full-blown database documentation for it  SQL Dependency Tracker can give you a visual representation of all your tables and show their linkings  or you can load in just certain tables or sprocs to show what is using them or what they are using themselves

User · Answer

Try PHPMyAdmin which has some really nice visualisation and editing feature  I am pretty sure you can even export to exel from it

User · Answer

When you say visualize the database schema  are you referring to a text-document of all your tables  sprocs  etc   or are you referring to a visual representation of your schema and dependencies    I know you mentioned MySQL  and it is very possible that it is supported now  but I am not sure   but RedGate has a number of tools that make that pretty simple  It s SQL Doc program can take your entire database and create full-blown database documentation for it  SQL Dependency Tracker can give you a visual representation of all your tables and show their linkings  or you can load in just certain tables or sprocs to show what is using them or what they are using themselves

User · Answer

How about the SQuirreL SQL Client   As mentioned in another SO question  this programs has the capability to generate a simple ER diagram

User · Answer

I found SchemaSpy quite good - you have to run the script every time schema changes but it is not so big deal   As pointed out in the comments there is also a GUI for it   Another nice tool is SchemaCrawler

User · Answer

DeZign for Databases might be interesting for you  You can reverse engineer and modify existing databases  Has got an auto-layout function and diagram layout is not meshed up when synchronizing your data model with the database

User · Answer

How about the SQuirreL SQL Client   As mentioned in another SO question  this programs has the capability to generate a simple ER diagram

User · Answer

When you say visualize the database schema  are you referring to a text-document of all your tables  sprocs  etc   or are you referring to a visual representation of your schema and dependencies    I know you mentioned MySQL  and it is very possible that it is supported now  but I am not sure   but RedGate has a number of tools that make that pretty simple  It s SQL Doc program can take your entire database and create full-blown database documentation for it  SQL Dependency Tracker can give you a visual representation of all your tables and show their linkings  or you can load in just certain tables or sprocs to show what is using them or what they are using themselves

User · Answer

on Mac OS X you can use Sequel Pro

User · Answer

I would recommend Toad data modeller

User · Answer

Years ago  I used to use Data Architect   I don t know if it s still out there    You could reverse engineer an existing schema into a relational table diagram     Or you could go even further  and reverse engineer an  Entity-Relationship model with an accompanying diagram   ER diagrams were really useful to me when discussing the data with people who were neither programmers nor database experts    Sometimes a few manual fixups to the ER model and ER diagram were necessary before it was a useful communication tool with stakeholders

User · Answer

I would recommend Toad data modeller

User · Answer

Visio professional has a database reverse-engineering tool built into it   You should be able to use it with MySQL through an ODBC driver   It works best when you reverse engineer the database and then create the diagrams by dragging them off the tables and views panel   It will drag any foreign key objects and put them on the diagram as well

User · Answer

SchemaBall is doing visualisation its own interesting way

User · Answer

Have you tried the arrange   auto arrange function in MySQL Workbench   It may save you from manually moving the tables around

User · Answer

Adminer  formerly phpMinAdmin   the web application for managing MySQL databases  draws simple diagram    The software itself is similiar to phpMyAdmin  but has more features  its lightweight and it comes in single PHP file

User · Answer

SchemaBall is doing visualisation its own interesting way

User · Answer

I looked for a long time for a decent  and preferably free  tool for linux and found this java application that is quite good  finally      http   sqldeveloper solyp com   Being Java it is cross-platform  I run it on Linux with no issues  and it will connect to any database you can get a JDBC driver for   ie  pretty much any database   It is quite easy to import your database and get a visual  ERM  of the database schema   The auto-layout feature is good as well  but note that it is not done automatically and you need to click the  automatic layout  button after importing your objects into the diagram   The application is also a pretty good generic database administration browsing tool   As one small example  I use it instead of pgadmin for some base development work because of simple niceties like the column width of SQL query results automatically sizing to fit content  which drives me crazy in pgadmin

User · Answer

Have you tried the arrange   auto arrange function in MySQL Workbench   It may save you from manually moving the tables around

User · Answer

Have you tried the arrange   auto arrange function in MySQL Workbench   It may save you from manually moving the tables around

User · Answer

I usually use SchemaSpy to do this  but recently I found a really simple article on sqlfairy that just uses the dump file to create the structure graph

User · Answer

I tried DBSchema   Nice features  but wildly slow for a database with about 75 tables   Unusable

User · Answer

I use SQL  Translator with DBIx  Class  I have DBIx  Class in my toolchain anyway  and combining it with SQL  Translator allows me to convert the schema into lots of different formats  Mostly initialization SQL scripts for different database servers  making it easy to develop on SQLite and move to Postgresql for production  but it can output GraphViz data too  so diagrams are trivial to generate

User · Answer

A different approach  but if you re using Ruby on Rails try RailRoad  http   railroad rubyforge org

User · Answer

How about the SQuirreL SQL Client   As mentioned in another SO question  this programs has the capability to generate a simple ER diagram

User · Answer

I tried DBSchema   Nice features  but wildly slow for a database with about 75 tables   Unusable

User · Answer

I use SQL  Translator with DBIx  Class  I have DBIx  Class in my toolchain anyway  and combining it with SQL  Translator allows me to convert the schema into lots of different formats  Mostly initialization SQL scripts for different database servers  making it easy to develop on SQLite and move to Postgresql for production  but it can output GraphViz data too  so diagrams are trivial to generate

User · Answer

ER Studio by Embarcadero is one of the costlier ones  but the hierarchical mode it present is by far the best one for understanding database models   It makes query writing the easiest task in the world   It also is incredible with normalization  denormalization  warehousing  documentation  etc   The downside is that it is a pretty expensive tool especially when you go multiplatform

User · Answer

Years ago  I used to use Data Architect   I don t know if it s still out there    You could reverse engineer an existing schema into a relational table diagram     Or you could go even further  and reverse engineer an  Entity-Relationship model with an accompanying diagram   ER diagrams were really useful to me when discussing the data with people who were neither programmers nor database experts    Sometimes a few manual fixups to the ER model and ER diagram were necessary before it was a useful communication tool with stakeholders

User · Answer

How about the SQuirreL SQL Client   As mentioned in another SO question  this programs has the capability to generate a simple ER diagram

User · Answer

I found SchemaSpy quite good - you have to run the script every time schema changes but it is not so big deal   As pointed out in the comments there is also a GUI for it   Another nice tool is SchemaCrawler

User · Answer

Try PHPMyAdmin which has some really nice visualisation and editing feature  I am pretty sure you can even export to exel from it

User · Answer

When you say visualize the database schema  are you referring to a text-document of all your tables  sprocs  etc   or are you referring to a visual representation of your schema and dependencies    I know you mentioned MySQL  and it is very possible that it is supported now  but I am not sure   but RedGate has a number of tools that make that pretty simple  It s SQL Doc program can take your entire database and create full-blown database documentation for it  SQL Dependency Tracker can give you a visual representation of all your tables and show their linkings  or you can load in just certain tables or sprocs to show what is using them or what they are using themselves

User · Answer

Visio professional has a database reverse-engineering tool built into it   You should be able to use it with MySQL through an ODBC driver   It works best when you reverse engineer the database and then create the diagrams by dragging them off the tables and views panel   It will drag any foreign key objects and put them on the diagram as well

User · Answer

ER Studio by Embarcadero is one of the costlier ones  but the hierarchical mode it present is by far the best one for understanding database models   It makes query writing the easiest task in the world   It also is incredible with normalization  denormalization  warehousing  documentation  etc   The downside is that it is a pretty expensive tool especially when you go multiplatform

User · Answer

Years ago  I used to use Data Architect   I don t know if it s still out there    You could reverse engineer an existing schema into a relational table diagram     Or you could go even further  and reverse engineer an  Entity-Relationship model with an accompanying diagram   ER diagrams were really useful to me when discussing the data with people who were neither programmers nor database experts    Sometimes a few manual fixups to the ER model and ER diagram were necessary before it was a useful communication tool with stakeholders

User · Answer

I like this tool  called simply DbSchema  It s written in Java so it runs on OS X  Windows  or Linux  It s a little clunky  especially when it comes to printing  but from my experience they re all like that  This one is the best of the several I ve tried  It makes nice  clear diagrams  Free trial  Costs about  120 depending on how many licenses you buy

User · Answer

Years ago  I used to use Data Architect   I don t know if it s still out there    You could reverse engineer an existing schema into a relational table diagram     Or you could go even further  and reverse engineer an  Entity-Relationship model with an accompanying diagram   ER diagrams were really useful to me when discussing the data with people who were neither programmers nor database experts    Sometimes a few manual fixups to the ER model and ER diagram were necessary before it was a useful communication tool with stakeholders

User · Answer

I like this tool  called simply DbSchema  It s written in Java so it runs on OS X  Windows  or Linux  It s a little clunky  especially when it comes to printing  but from my experience they re all like that  This one is the best of the several I ve tried  It makes nice  clear diagrams  Free trial  Costs about  120 depending on how many licenses you buy

User · Answer

I usually use SchemaSpy to do this  but recently I found a really simple article on sqlfairy that just uses the dump file to create the structure graph

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