Recently, I have been working on several large SQL projects, so when I was given the opportunity to write a review for theKompany.com's Data Architect software (especially now that its little brother Rekall has being open sourced), I knew exactly which wretched projects to test it against; mine.
Before plunging into the details of my week-long tryst, I should reveal what Data Architect is. Data Architect is a cross-platform, database neutral, ERD (Entity Relationship Diagram) based, data modeling tool, which runs on Linux and Microsoft Windows. It also supports OS X, but unfortunately my wallet doesn't, so I will have to limit this review to the former operating systems. Now that we have all the technobabble, acronyms and buzz words out of the way, let's look at Data Architect.
The Install
No software review would be complete without blathering incessantly about, and basing the majority of the review on, the installer. In this case I'm afraid I must disappoint. On Microsoft Windows, the installer is a single, simple Microsoft Installer (.msi) file. You double-click on it and Data Architect, through the miracle of modern mouse-clicking technology, is quickly installed.
Installing Data Architect on Linux is slightly more challenging. Data Architect itself is quite easy, but you may need to install some other software as well, which I will mention in a moment.
The Data Architect CD includes RPM packages for the distributions that support them, and for everybody else, there is a single .tar.gz file that contains an install.sh script. For me, this part of the install worked flawlessly on Slackware 9.1.
Besides Data Architect, on Linux you must also install unixODBC and possibly a driver for your database (unixODBC includes a driver for PostgreSQL, for instance, but others you may have to build manually). unixODBC is available at http://www.unixodbc.org or if you are using Debian, it is obtainable through apt. I also found a Slackware package for it at http://www.linuxpackages.net, and SuSE Linux 9.0 ships with unixODBC installed by default.
The unixODBC part of the setup posed a slight challenge for me since I have never used it and was not familiar with the configuration process; in particular, which Driver and Setup library I needed to use. If you are planning to use PostgreSQL, and are unfamiliar with unixODBC, let me save you some time. The Driver library is "/usr/lib/libodbcspql.so" and the Setup library is "/usr/lib/libodbcpsqlS.so".
Overall, the setup process was mind-numbingly easy on Windows, and should be fairly simple for an experienced user on Linux.
ODBC
I liked the fact that Data Architect includes a toolbar button for launching the ODBC configuration dialog too. It is quite convenient and makes the configuration process seem like it's part of the Data Architect experience instead of a separate stroll out to some other utility. I realize that this is a small thing, but it demonstrates the effort that theKompany.com has put into making the user's experience a complete and positive one.
Projects
You should begin by creating a project, and then continue by creating physical models from within your project. You can choose to create a stand-alone physical model, but I don't recommend doing so. Data Architect manages connections to the server through the project object, so if you create only a physical model, you will be unable to connect to your database server. After creating a project, you can right-click on the project in the browser window and select Add from the drop-down menu to add Physical models to your workspace.
Before you can really begin using Data Architect, you must first configure the ODBC connection to your database. It is inside this configuration tool
Data Architect manages projects through what they call a workspace.
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