Besides Erwin, I see Sybase's PowerDesigner is good but again you want a cheap/free one hmmm.
I am sure, you have to compromise a lot on the features if you want free.
To be honest I have not tried these below .I am not aware of their limitations
even though I do evaluate ETL tools, databases,NOSQL dbs...monitoring tools ....
Maybe you can have a look at Altova's DatabaseSpy,Quest Software's Toad Data Modeler,Datanamic Solutions' DeZign,Mindjet MindManager.
If you find them suitable----- if you can share your thoughts here too.
You know we get many clients who are requesting for POCs of various genres and they want to save cost always.
Also did you contact CA Erwin support if they have a cheaper model for small scale industry? For me , there is nothing like
Erwin.
Raja K Thaw
My wiki: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Kt_raj1
Street Children suffer not by their fault. We can help them if we want.
It's shameless plug time! Take a look at Wherescape Red and 3D. Red is the only integrated development environment for datawarehousing that I've ever seen. It will solve your ETL, modeling, development, scheduling, and documentation needs in one tool.
www.wherescape.com
Cheers,
Blaine
Some drink from the fountain of knowledge, others just gargle.
Don't even try to build a data warehouse model without a real modeling tool. There are many productivity features in a "real" modeling tool that a drawing tool cannot provide. We use Erwin for logical and physical modeling. WhereScape Red provides excellent productivity for physical modeling and ETL. I've heard first hand praise of the productivity and capability of Red. It is works excellent with the Teradata database.
Lee Arnett
Senior Product Manager – Healthcare Data Modeling
Monument, CO
719-351-0766
Lee.arnett@teradata.com
What do you think about SQL Power Architect at http://www.sqlpower.ca. Is it worth a try?
Does anyone here uses it?
Is anyone using, or have any suggestions for, a free/cheap data modelling or database design tool? We are about to start planning and building a new data warehouse. It is fairly small, and we can't justify paying for Erwin licences, so I wondered if anyone was using anything else.
I've tried using Visio (as per another forum post), but you can't get the information out once you've typed it in. Our other oiption is to document it in excel, and I've actually downloaded a template which has VBA to write create table scripts, which with a bot of changing would be able to create versions for Teradata. However if anyone can recommend any other options I would be grateful to know about them.