A post over on Larry O’Brien’s blog prompted me to put together this short list of resources that can assist with database factoring and understanding an unfamiliar database:
- Visual Studio CTP for Database Professionals, you can download CTP 5 – Beta here.
- Red-Gate’s SQL Dependency Tracker (14-day trial download available). Larry notes:
“One limitation is that the tool does not have a “Print” capability. I would
like to print out a (huge, wall-sized) poster of the dependency for study. It
does, though, have an “Export to image…” capability. If you save to .PNG it
does not preserve detail, but if you save to .EMF, you can import it into
Illustrator and divvy it up there.” - The book “Refactoring Databases: Evolutionary Database Design” by Scott W. Ambler and Pramod Sadalage, has received excellent reviews (unfortunately mine is on order). There is a dedicated website here
- Sparx Systems Enterprise Architect is a comprehensive database design tool.
Having access to an A1 size plotter is also very useful!