Re: Visualize database schema

On 08/14/12 1:54 AM, Dario Beraldi wrote:
> Hello,
>
> Apologies if this question has been asked before, but I couldn't come
> up with a decent solution...
>
> Can anyone advice about a tool to visualize a database schema?
> Ideally, I would like something that takes the SQL definition of a
> schema or database (essentially the output of pg_dump) and produces a
> graphical representation of the tables, constraints and indexes which
> can be moved around for ease of visualization (something like the
> "Graphical query builder" that comes with pgAdmin =>1.14).
> I don't care (and don't want) to modify or query the database with
> such tool, I just want to visualize it. (In fact, I tried to use
> pgAdmin for this but the graphical queries can only be saved as images
> and so they cannot be reloaded).

generically, thats known as ERD, Entity-Relationship-Diagram. there's
ots of tools that do it, but I've never seen one that didnt make a
rather messy graph of anything more complex than a few tables.

DBVisualizer is one such tool. Also, many UML tools can reverse
engineer a database and generate graphics, and even let you modify the
schema graphically.

the free tools I've seen have been pretty klunky and/or limited, the
decent tools tend to be commercial and range from modest to rather
expensive.

--
john r pierce N 37, W 122
santa cruz ca mid-left coast