Next Up: Data Modeling
I tell new developers (all anxious to write the bestest, fastest code they can) that they're worrying about the wrong thing. The most important thing is to get their database design right.
If you get the database design right then everything else will be easy; if you get the database design wrong... then make sure you're paid by the hour. In December, we're going to review one of the top vote getters in the database category of this year's VSM Readers Choice Awards: CA Technologies' ERWin Data Modeler.
We expect a lot from our database design tools: That they support whatever notation we're using, that their output be compatible with whatever database we're using, that we be able to share the designs that we create with the tool with all of the stakeholders in our development, that it integrate with our development toolset. And, of course, that they actually help us get the database design right.
These days there's a more important question: In a world of Object Relational Modeling tools (like Visual Studio's Entity Framework, to name one) is their still a spot in the toolspace for ERWin?
Posted by Peter Vogel on 11/17/2010