The 2nd most useful Java-Oracle tool this year

The 2nd most useful Java-Oracle Tool that I’ve used this year is schema spy.

How often have you taken over a project without any documenation? Even worse , there is a database involved, and everybody just ‘knows’ (or pretends to know) where things are. What if all the orginal developers are gone and nobody is left to explain things? I can find my way around most legacy Java code , but databases leave me cold.

Still not convinced – take a look on the Schema Spy website. The level of information that this tool gives you takes you from knowing nothing about the database to knowing almost everything.

Interested in trying it out? Follow these simple steps
– Download it from http://schemaspy.sourceforge.net/
– Change the configuration to point to your database
– Install the Graphviz component (available here)
– Run the tool and await your fully documented database.

Just to shame the commercial competition , as well as Oracle , Schema Spy supports  DB2, hsqldb    ,    Microsoft SQL Server,     MySQL, PostgreSQL and Sybase. It’s written by John Currier and is well worth a donation.

In case you’re wondering, the most useful Java-Oracle tool for 2006 is Oracle’s project raptor. Schema spy runs it a very close second. Considering that it’s a Billion dollar company Vs one man , I’d chalk that up as a victory for the little guy!