Business Intelligence Review - Topic: Battle of the Open Source/Free Data Modelling Tools http://www.bireview.org/bireviewblogs/forum/open-source-tools/battle-of-the-open-sourcefree-data-modelling-tools/ Simple:Press Version 4.3.3 Christopher Shortt on Battle of the Open Source/Free Data Modelling Tools http://www.bireview.org/bireviewblogs/forum/open-source-tools/battle-of-the-open-sourcefree-data-modelling-tools/#p6 Open Source Tools http://www.bireview.org/bireviewblogs/forum/open-source-tools/battle-of-the-open-sourcefree-data-modelling-tools/#p6 I am going to get this started soon with the first data modelling tool to be reviewed being DBDesigner Fork. This application is a development off-shoot of the fabForce DBDesigner v4. The sourceForge website is here. Before I dive in though, it might be useful to set the criteria for the battle. That being said, here they are:

  1. The ability to create ERD diagrams or at least a facsimile thereof using UML class diagrams. Extra points awarded if it does both or if the UML class diagrams can be customized for ERD type diagrams
  2. The ability to generate web-sites from the final diagrams and/or any other supplementary information that can be added to the diagram objects
  3. Speaking of which, extra points awarded for being able to attach significant amounts of meta-data and/or reference external files
  4. Naturally, ease-of-use will be a priority
  5. As will a short learning curve
  6. Ease of implementation is a bonus as will be the ability to install the tool on multiple platforms (in my case, I will test some version of windows, Snow Leopard (Macs) and Linux (likely Ubuntu).

I will also include whatever pains I went through during the installation as well, if there was any. Since I run mainly Snow Leopard and will need to virtualize environments for Windows (probably running Wine under OS X) and Linux, I am guessing there might be some. I will keep the pain of installing in the virtual environments separate from the pain of installing the tool itself (which there really shouldn't be any).

If you have any particular data modelling tool that you would like me to test, please leave a comment below. Also, soon, I will present a compiled list of contenders, so speak up quickly :).

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