| Subject | RE: [firebird-support] Prefered CASE tools for Firebird? |
|---|---|
| Author | Myles Wakeham |
| Post date | 2004-07-13T07:00:30Z |
Computer Aided Software Engineering (CASE) tools have been around for
decades and are basically tools that allow you to build application software
and/or databases. The idea is that you start with the Requirements of your
project, and work through systems analysis to design, and then building the
application all in conjunction with the tools. Rational Rose is a good
example of a CASE tool.
In the case of databases, the industry has adopted Entity Relationship
Diagramming as a technique to represent both the logical and physical model
of your data. Personally I can't do without ERDs for databases, simply
because it allows you to step back, away from the tables and columns and
look a real information on the collection of data in a graphical form. CASE
tools for ERDs are effectively a drawing tool, allowing you to draw entities
(roughly translating to tables), and relationships between them. The tool
will then build the SQL DML to create your database, and normally will
handle all the referential integrity constraints that you want, along with
ensuring that your database conforms to normal rules (per C.J. Date, etc.).
There are probably hundreds of books on the subject of data modeling, and
ERDs. I would do a browse through Amazon.com and see what you find. But
its almost core education before designing databases IMHO. A poorly
designed database is probably the worse thing in the world you would want,
simply because it will impede on any application's ability to make sense of
the data.
Myles
===========================
Myles Wakeham
Director of Engineering
Tech Solutions Inc.
Scottsdale, Arizona USA
Phone (480) 451-7440
Web: www.techsol.org
decades and are basically tools that allow you to build application software
and/or databases. The idea is that you start with the Requirements of your
project, and work through systems analysis to design, and then building the
application all in conjunction with the tools. Rational Rose is a good
example of a CASE tool.
In the case of databases, the industry has adopted Entity Relationship
Diagramming as a technique to represent both the logical and physical model
of your data. Personally I can't do without ERDs for databases, simply
because it allows you to step back, away from the tables and columns and
look a real information on the collection of data in a graphical form. CASE
tools for ERDs are effectively a drawing tool, allowing you to draw entities
(roughly translating to tables), and relationships between them. The tool
will then build the SQL DML to create your database, and normally will
handle all the referential integrity constraints that you want, along with
ensuring that your database conforms to normal rules (per C.J. Date, etc.).
There are probably hundreds of books on the subject of data modeling, and
ERDs. I would do a browse through Amazon.com and see what you find. But
its almost core education before designing databases IMHO. A poorly
designed database is probably the worse thing in the world you would want,
simply because it will impede on any application's ability to make sense of
the data.
Myles
===========================
Myles Wakeham
Director of Engineering
Tech Solutions Inc.
Scottsdale, Arizona USA
Phone (480) 451-7440
Web: www.techsol.org
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Jonathan Neve [mailto:jonathan@...]
> Sent: Monday, July 12, 2004 11:48 PM
> To: firebird-support@yahoogroups.com
> Subject: Re: [firebird-support] Prefered CASE tools for Firebird?
>
> Myles Wakeham wrote:
>
> >Just curious, what CASE tools are people using for ERDs for Firebird?
> >
> Sorry for my ignorance, but what's a CASE tool, and what's an ERD?
>
> Thanks!
>
> Jonathan Neve.
>
>
>
>
> Yahoo! Groups Links
>
>
>
>