Power*Architect Data Modeling Tool
The need: When you have a lot of databases that must have the schema synchronized, it can get difficult. At work, when I finish making changes in our development database, I need to roll out the schema changes to our other 10+ databases.
Old solution: Keep track of all the “ALTER” statements in a text file. Then apply them to every database. Inevitably something gets missed. Oh the fun.
New solution: Power*Architect Data Modeling Tool by SQL Power. Just one part of this application is the ability to compare data models! It’s EXTREMELY simple to compare data models from two databases and have Power Architect output the SQL statements needed to make the older database match the newer.
Download Power Architect from the google source code link: http://code.google.com/p/power-architect/
Once you install the application, go to the “Connections” menu and add your database server connections. Then to compare data models, go to the “Tools” menu and click “Compare DM”. Comparing data models could not be any simpler.
Power Architect seems to natively support Oracle (8i,9i,10g), PostgreSQL, SQL Server (2000,2005), MySQL, DB2, Derby Embedded, HSQLDB and SQLstream.
This is a VERY powerful tool! I am looking forward to learning more about the power of this program.
A few weeks ago, I made a post about What is a blog?. This post is a follow up on that post.
There are a lot of good blogging tools to use. I am only going to briefly go over the tools that I’ve used.
- Xanga.com:
Xanga was one of the first weblog sites. I think they did a great job starting out; however, they have become a bit stagnant at making themselves better. Nonetheless, if you are looking for an easy site to get updates out to many non-technical people, this is the easiest as other xanga users may easily subscribe to your blog.
- Blogger.com:
I started using blogger and liked it. It’s an easy to use interface and you can setup multiple blogs with great ease under your blogger account. Blogger does support publishing to other FTP servers if you know what you’re doing.
- WordPress.com:
I use wordpress on my server. They have tons of plugins that you can apply to your blog. If you get an account and use their hosting, it doesn’t appear you have access to alot of their plugins.
- MySpace.com:
The only reason I list this one is because I don’t like it. Myspace is very clunky and has a lot of junk everywhere. As far as social networking, it has done what xanga could’ve done a long time ago, become more of a community. If you want to use myspace, please don’t fill out the profiles with all your information. AND read this article
If you have alot of friends who use Xanga and you wish to get updates to them quickly, use xanga. If you want an easy to use blog that doesn’t take alot of time, use Blogger. If you want to go a bit more technical and have alot more control over your blog, go with WordPress.com. If you want to be another teenie bopper who is asking to be date raped, go with MySpace.com, fill out and post every profile, personality test and survey you can find.
I’ve used quite a few blogger/social networking tools and myspace.com has to be the worst.
User friendliness: Ridiculous. There are so many buttons, options, settings, friends, about me, blog, advertisements, etc… trying to get your attention. It’s like A.D.D. all over again. They could spend a day or two redesigning the interface and get a lot out of it.
Functionality: Works ok once you find out where everything is.
Extendability: Haven’t even tried, I have wordpress as my main site.
Reliability: Not good. I’ve had the site throw errors and not let me into things for no good reason. I think they need more servers and some better coding.
I think xanga is really good for social networking; however, they’ve lost the lead with the lack of innovation.
Well, those are my ramblings.
