Designing database from scratch

[Jess Robinson]

On Wed, 25 Oct 2006, alex at owal.co.uk wrote:

> Folks,
>
> I'm designing a database from scratch and want to progress from the "back
> of an envelope design". I'm thinking of using SQL Fairy eg
>
>
> I write an XML description of the SQL Schema
>
> SQL Fairy converts that to
>
>   MySQL SQL Code (typically create statements)
>
> and possibly
>
>   Class::DBI
>
> and definitely
>
>   GraphViz diagrams
>
>
> (I'll also be writing some Java code to access the database too and
> possibly some PHP to if I am unlucky).
>
> What is the "state of the art" for database design in the open source
> world? What do you use?


I wrote myself a Tk-based frontend to SQL Fairy a while back 
(draw/create/import tables from anything sql fairy can read, output via 
any of the producers) .. Which is nice for editing existing ones.

For new ones I tend to either create the tables in the db and fiddle with 
them, then extract with DBIx::Class, or just create the DBIx::Class schema 
and ask it to deploy to the db, or dump me the SQL files. (Which uses SQL 
Fairy ;)

Poke me or the SQLFairy list if you have any needs/suggestions for it.

Jess