What is everyone using in terms of data modelling / case tools (besides visio)? Im in the market and want to hear some opinions. Looking for something with both forward and reverse engineering.

Thanks Matt

Enterprise Architect from Sparx Systems: http://www.sparxsystems.com/. Very reasonably priced. The only small niggle I've got is that the gui is pretty complex.

I currently use Enterprise Architect with the Model-Driven Generation (MDG) Plugin. Both are very reasonably priced. Especially when compared with others.

The support for round-trip engineering isn't stella but I think that's a bit of a red-herring anyway. I generally use it like an electronic whiteboard, then code by hand and reverse engineer everything afterwards. If nothing else it's a very quick way to produce the documentation. The Gui definately takes some getting used to though.

I did try Borland plug-in for Visual Studio which was supposed to support real-time code / model synchronization. Great in theory but it was the buggiest software I've ever used. I requested a refund within a week. It was a while ago and things may have improved by now.

Cheers, Pete

I'm using EA also. Interface does have a few quirks (what program doesn't?). It's cheap, the support is very good, and they update it constantly.

What is the learning curve to productivity increase ratio for enterprise architect?

Does EA have the ability to generate ddl scripts for a database? I just took a brief look at it but hopefully will do more reading on the site later.

Enterprise Architect has an "Import DDL Schema from ODBC" and a "Generate DDL" option.

Cheers, Pete

Well seing that i dont know uml, enterprise architect seemed a bit foreign. I think i want something like erwin with a lower price point hehe. I like the forward, reverse, change script functionality of erwin, are there any other products with a similiar feature set?

Sacrificing the change script functionality, something like case studio or dezign might work, has anyone used those?