Friday, July 03, 2009

SQL Modeler for Mac OSX (Part 2)

Louis-Guillaume Carrier-Bédard commented on my previous post about SQL Modeler for Mac OSX, that I had to check out a tool called Power*Architect.

So I thought to give it a go. The steps to get it running:

  • Go to the SQL Power website and download Power*Architect
  • As most OSX applications you install by dragging the application in your Applications folder
  • So now I wanted to get an ERD of some tables, so you run Power*Architect and select from which Data Source you want to capture.
  • I had to download the Oracle 10g JDBC driver first (apparently 11g is not yet foreseen in Power*Architect)
  • In the User Preferences you can tell where the driver can be found
  • Next I dragged-dropped from the interface the tables I wanted to the right hand side, but the tables where not nicely ordered
  • Luckily there is a button "Automatic Layout" which I pushed and that gave me the below result


As far as I've tested Power*Architect, it looks very promising. It's definitely a tool I will try a bit more in the future.

5 comments:

Raymond said...

I have a mac too, looked at power*architect too, in the end choose to use Happy Fish
http://www.polderij.nl/happyfish/
Its windows only so use VMWare Fusion/Paralles or VirtualBox.
It is only 99 Euro, does reverse engineering and submodelling.
And very good at printing/scaling down so you don't always have to print a3. I do have good eyes though :-)

Stew said...

It looks like the price for Power*Architect (free) beats them all, or did I miss something?

I once tried the extract capabilities in MS Visio, but I don't use these diagrams much so I wasn't that particular about the output. So I can't say how they measure up to what you're showing.

Thanks for sharing though!

Stew said...

Oops, looks like I spoke too soon about the price? Since they charge $4,500US for premium support, I'm thinking the "free" download must be a trial version.

Nevermind! :-(

Ben said...

Hi,
I'm working for SQL Power and i think Stew misread something.
Power Architect is completely free and open source (GPL2). You can get the latest release and the source code from http://code.google.com/p/power-architect/
You can also get the latest nightly builds (might not be always stable) form http://pag.sqlpower.ca:8080/hudson/

Premium support has nothing to with the unlimited use and download of the software but with training etc.

If you have any questions feel free to ask or use our forum.

Stew said...

Sorry about that!