Reverse Engineering the ERD of an Oracle database
	Part XIV. Databases (mostly PostgreSQL)

Reverse Engineering the ERD of an Oracle database

Jurjen Bokma

August 2008

To obtain the ERD of an Oracle 10g database from the database itself, we use Toad Data Modeler from ToadSoft. This program runs under Windows and must be payed for, but there's no Linux tool that I know of that does the trick, so here goes:

Install Windows on a scrap box or a virtual machine.
Fill in anything they want to know on ToadSoft's registration pages, download the program and install it.
Click File->Reverse Engineering and fill in the account data that lead to your Oracle database.
Click Next until satisfied.

	Note
Although this got me an ERD, the layout of the thing is hideous and of no use (many tables overlapping, and autolayout doesn't help at all). The Quest employee following up on my download who called the other day advised to use one of the Computer Associates tools, but its trial version offers only 35 or so entity ERDs, from which I won't be able to judge whether the tool can handle the 300 or so SpaceWalk produces. I won't go through the hassle of trying that out.

Note

Although this got me an ERD, the layout of the thing is hideous and of no use (many tables overlapping, and autolayout doesn't help at all). The Quest employee following up on my download who called the other day advised to use one of the Computer Associates tools, but its trial version offers only 35 or so entity ERDs, from which I won't be able to judge whether the tool can handle the 300 or so SpaceWalk produces. I won't go through the hassle of trying that out.


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