Database Modeling Tools

When designing databases, many people prefer to use the word document format to design database structures before creating physical databases; there is very little Database Design Using database modeling tools. If you ask people who are unwilling to use database modeling tools, I think they will give you the following answers:
1. The database structure is not complex and there is no need to use modeling tools.
2. It is difficult and unrealistic to use modeling tools.
3. Our company has a special database document format. I am afraid that modeling tools cannot generate suitable documents.
I don't think the above answers are true because of misunderstanding of modeling tools.
Taking powerdesign as an example, you can respond to the above answers one by one.
Some people take it for granted that the use of modeling tools requires complex data analysis and other work. In fact, this is a misunderstanding. database modeling tools certainly have part of this capability, but it is not important, it is not even necessary. You can focus on the database design. You only need to establish various entities and their relationships. Even if this is done, when you build an entity, the attribute of an object is the field of a table, and the relationship between the object is the relationship between the table and the table. The character input in this process is never greater than the word input. Moreover, when you are familiar with modeling tools like word, the time spent in this process is less than the time you used to design a database using word. More importantly, as long as this step is completed, you can directly generate the SQL statement for creating the database. Code Or let the modeling tool establish a connection with the database so that you can change the database structure at any time by changing the entities and their relationships. In the traditional word method, you must repeat the field name and type when creating a database, in addition, in order to ensure the consistency between the database created in this process and the database structure designed in word, you must pay additional effort. Worse, if you change the database, for example, from sqlserver to Oracle, you may spend more energy. The database modeling tool does not have this disadvantage. It should be unrelated to the database platform, so it can be simply transplanted to different database platforms.
In addition, most of the database modeling tools are graphic interfaces, which is more advantageous for establishing the relationship with entities, at least more intuitive and concise than the text method, now you only need to place a control on the relationship between the primary and Foreign keys, and then make a few choices.
The database modeling tool also supports powerful data export functions to generate hypertext or Word documents in full custom formats, which can meet the output format you want, And this operation is not complex, let's put it this way. At least the data document format I have seen can be exported using powerdesigner.
Many database modeling tools now support code generation to generate some basic data operation code and support multiple languages, such as powerdesigner. net, Java, Pb, Delphi and other languages.
Imagine that you only need to spend less energy and time designing the database structure than using word to get super convenience of cross-platform, good consistency, graphic interface, free format, and out-of-band code generation function, why not?