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I am trying to generate an Entity Relationship Diagram from an existing MS SQLServer 2005 database. What tools are available? Specifically,I am not only interested in ERD's more directly I am looking for a tool to help quickly learning and analysing a medium size (schema wise not really row wise) database structure.

user6288
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I can see that this post is quite old and MS SQL Server Management Studio might have not had this feature back then! Though as far as I know with SQL Server 2012 you can generate the ER diagrams by taking a few simple steps listed below:

  1. MS SQL Server management Studio > File menu > "Connect Object Explorer"
  2. Choose your Database node and expand it. under this node you'll find a sub-node called "Database Diagrams"
  3. Right click on "Database Diagrams" > "New Database Diagram" > Add tables that you wish to see their columns, relationships, ...
Zahra
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    Diagram export is very limited. AFAIK, It's only exportable as a bitmap which can then be pasted in e.g. word or powerpoint. – til_b Aug 13 '14 at 14:19
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The database reverse engineering feature of microsoft Visio are excellent for pulling the schema out of a database and developing from there. I'd investigate that avenue if you haven't already.

lomaxx
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    One thing to note is that the reverse engineering of a database functionality was removed from Visio 2013. http://blogs.office.com/2012/10/17/uml-and-database-diagrams-in-the-new-visio/ – Paul G Feb 05 '14 at 17:59
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I've used Visio and had some good results with that. One thing I do though too is to use the visual designers (Database Diagrams) built into SQL Server GUI. When you drop the tables in there, it automatically includes the foreign keys. You can just include the tables you want at this point to focus in.

All of these tools though anticipate the foreign keys pre-existing.

Nick DeVore
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    For the record, this capability has been dropped from the regular and professional versions of Visio. – Curt Jul 03 '17 at 19:39
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I've been happy with DBDesigner4.

dkretz
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You can also generate an ERD from Microsoft Visual Studio 2005.