ChartDB – Free and open source, database design editor

I have seen project teams diving into developing a new application without having a basic diagram in place explaining any aspect of the solution -- including the data model.

Not sure what it takes for simple ER diagrams to become the norm for project documentation. In spite of so many tools being available in this space hardly anyone actually uses them in practice.

Maybe Microsoft has to make it a feature in Excel or PowerPoint for people to use it?

These diagrams need not be exhaustive but should convey the key structure and relations as per context. We can create a dozen small diagrams for the same database if needed to document the requirements and design. Whatever works and does the job of communicating and documenting.

I used to be bullish on creating ERDs, often using them as an onboarding exercise, even for databases with 100+ tables. However, comprehensive ERDs are becoming rare, and that's okay. Their value is short-lived due to the high cost of maintenance. While polished ERDs can be nice to have, they aren't essential.

For creating ERDs as code, tools like dbdiagram.io and eraser.io are popular options. ERWin is the original tool for UML/ERD diagrams, but it's expensive.

Why do people use things like this? Is it for talking with managers?

I'm being sincere. Maybe I should be using it. I don't see why though.

[dupe]

Show HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41339308

many such offerings around, it seems. What I am looking for however, is a tool which I can use / script against. My use case is to produce (relatively straightforward) db diagrams from some model descriptions I have (part of another process). I have table names, column names, and relationships in a memory structure, and want to draw an ER like diagram. Currently looking at producing this wit plantuml, generating the puml file form my data, then running plantuml to generate the png / svg.

Looking around i find most tools in this corner are either full fledged DB design tools with their own editor, but no API. The others like this and things like dbdiagram.io usually are focused online only, which is not an option for me.

Any suggestions greatly appreciated...

I wish this existed when I started my project 5 years ago. I had to design a database schema for a full stack project using postgres. I was working with a scientific domain expert, and it was very helpful to have a diagram to review, so they could identify issues that might arise due to future domain specific needs.

This caused many one-on-one meetings where we would look at the diagram, and I'd note changes to be made for next meeting.

With this, we could have made changes live during meetings, and saved many iterations.

Things like pgadmin existed, but it didn't look as friendly for non-technical folks. This might decrease some friction.

dupe? (3 days ago for the project's GitHub) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41339308

Lovely, but my main problem with these tools is that they're unidirectional and aim to be the central authority. But they're a picture, no the database.

I understand why people uses them, I just don't need a tool like that.

So every tool "exports to SQL" expecting all changes in the database are reflected in the diagram. But the diagram is not the database. So we've got two jobs now.

dbeaver https://dbeaver.com/docs/dbeaver/ER-Diagrams/ does ERD. They are interactive and malleable. May not be "beautiful" but the whole product is FOSS and insanely useful for any database work.

Why does the page have so much scrolling jank for a static landing page?

What's different between this and drawdb

Cool, works with my YugabyteDB deployment using the provided scripts for Postgres.

love it, but it doesn't (yet) handle editing huge tables with 100+ columns where the scroll bar jumps around a ton while trying to type. 100% going to be watching this project, and building smaller things with it

Why is the mobile version of the website so slow?

data types seem wrong, ie. sqlite doesn't have smallint right?