Hi Nadya,

I use Visio Enterprise Architect Edition for Visual Studio. I personally model in ORM as oppossed to ER, and the ORM modeling features of that version of Visio are very impressive. It supports natural language modeling, and automatically sets constraints based on examples.

If you do go that route, there are two types of ORM models to choose from. I forget which is the right one to use, but use only the one which has three shapes - it is the more advanced one.

I personally think that ORM is the best way to model data. If you need ER, it will convert your ORM diagram to ER, which you can then use to update SQL Server directly (though I've never done it), print out ER diagrams, etc.

Terry Halpin, the "father" of ORM, has an episode on MSDN TV (or whatever it's called), showing some of the features of Visio. Dr. Halpin now works for MS, and his genius, if it may be called such, is very evident in the Visio product.

I think you need an MSDN Universal subscription to get the Enterprise Architects Edition with MSDN (in which case you can only use it for development purposes).

Good Luck,

David

>Hi everybody,
>
>Would you please recommend me data modeling tools and describe your experience with them?
>
>Thanks in advance.