Oracle Pushes New Data Modeling Tool

Oracle wants to ease the data modeling process for Oracle database developers. The new tool integrates into Oracle SQL Developer and allows users to develop logical, multidimensional, user-defined data types, relational and physical data models.

Oracle has released a new tool designed to help developers more easily design data models for the Oracle database.

Dubbed the Oracle SQL Developer Data Modeler, the standalone tool supports logical, relational, multidimensional and data type modeling, and with it, users can build and modify data models.

"Every successful application starts with a strong data model," said Mike Hichwa, vice president of Software Development at Oracle, in a statement. "Oracle SQL Developer Data Modeler not only provides a graphical way to develop data models, but an effective way to communicate existing data models to application developers."

The tool integrates with reports exposed in Oracle SQL Developer, the company's graphical database development tool. In the future, the integration will be expanded to include a subset of modeling features and the ability to view any model created in the standalone viewer, said Kris Rice, director of database tools product management at Oracle.

"These features will be important to developers where there is a central model that is maintained by data architects," Rice said in an e-mail. "The data architects can define the models for the various systems and then push out the models in a read-only manner to all developers on the projects."

In addition to integrating with SQL Developer, the tool forward-engineers entity relationship diagrams to relational models, transforming rules and decisions made at the conceptual level to the relational model. It also does the reverse, and supports Barker and Bachman notations so developers can switch between models to suit the needs of the audience. 

Right now, Oracle SQL Developer Data Modeler is available for all editions of Oracle Database 11g and runs on Mac OS X, Windows and Linux. The tool is also available for Oracle Database 10g.