A few more ideas for Workbench 5.1 - SQL IDE
Well done. A good tool to help design databases.
My suggestions are toward improving the documentation. I have been a user of MS SQL Server Management Studio and have gotten used to some of the nice graphics features (which don't all work properly, and you would not want to copy :-)
In my current design for a corporate manufacturing database, I am up to 17 tables, and I expect to be at 60 by the time I am finished. I tried the Autolayout, and I am glad I had saved before trying it, because most of my tables ended up in a single heap. Manual layout would be fine if there was control over the connectors. I am anticipating difficulty arranging 60 tables with rows and indices displayed plus interconnects on one diagram, and still have it readable.
It would be nice if the connectors could be "routed" somehow to avoid going through other tables. Normally I arrange tables in rows and columns, and route the connectors in the whitespace between tables, but Workbench makes up its own mind, with the dog-legs being "half-way" - end of story. A means of dragging the connectors to a specific edge of a table, and of creating corners where desired would be ideal. I am thinking of the relatively simple "smart-graphics" found in many windows apps. (apologies to 'nixers).
Secondly, It would also be nice to have a choice of whether the crows feet autoarrange along an edge (sufficient for pure design) or can be anchored to the row to which they belong (clearer documentation). Where there are several connectors into a single key, the entry points may be stacked on top of each other where the 1-1 symbol is the same.
I do appreciate that graphics represents significant work, but I believe that most of it is already there, with the additions of specifying end points anchored to spots on the table objects.
Many thanks for a wonderful design tool, and thank you for the opportunity to contribute. Regards