High-quality ERD generator for PostgresQL under Linux?

Question

Background

MySQL Workbench can produce appealing and high-quality ERDs such as:

Research

What PostgreSQL ERD tools are available that meet the requirements? The following are unsuitable:

dbVisualizer - Yellow squares.
AquaFold - Yellow squares.
SQL Developer - Coloured squares.
Dia - Coloured squares.
SQL Power Architect - Black and white squares.
SchemaBank - Can't export to PNG; looks okay, nothing stellar.
SchemaSpy - XML export makes it possible to write an XSL skin...
Gliffy - Incompatible Flash version.
Druid - No.

Requirements

Looking for an ERD tool:

Visually stunning by default
Can reverse-engineer a PostgreSQL (or JDBC-compliant) database
Runs on Linux (or under WINE)
Export high-resolution PNG (or SVG)
Free or Open Source

phpPgAdmin and pgAdmin3 don't do ERDs. – Frank Heikens May 30 '10 at 09:17 — Frank Heikens, May 30 '10 at 09:17

score 24 · Accepted Answer · edited Nov 01 '18 at 17:21

24

This is a little bit dated question, but for completeness. What about PgModeler? According to their github repo it's under GPL3. Schema creation works well.

edited Nov 01 '18 at 17:21

Dave Jarvis

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answered Jan 18 '13 at 22:45

jhexp

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Not yet. I'm looking into the latest version (0.4.0-beta). It seems that it supports pretty much everything that maps into postgres features or ddl. Binary for windows is 11mb gzipped and doesn't require installation. – jhexp Jan 18 '13 at 23:38
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Latest version ( 0.6.0) does support reverse engineering and automated grouping tables by schema (one color for each schema). – Awi Oct 29 '13 at 15:12
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Just tried ver 0.6.1 today. Intuitive UI, great features considering it's free. But for complex diagram, the table columns often reorder itself, and it sometimes crash. You can use it if you don't mind those things. – Fandi Susanto Nov 07 '13 at 11:49
pgModeler: very long install (Arch Linux AUR: pacaur; g++ ...), but like DbSchema also appeared to work OK, looks nice. Using DBeaver, however: nice interface; integrated ERD for multiple RDBMS including PostgreSQL ... [ http://dbeaver.jkiss.org/ ] – Victoria Stuart May 19 '17 at 22:32
The install really is a bit of a nightmare, this helped me to get pgmodeller to work in Debian 9 - https://github.com/pgmodeler/pgmodeler/issues/911 – cardamom Nov 01 '18 at 15:18

score 16 · Answer 2 · edited Dec 18 '19 at 05:21

16

DbSchema is a Visual Designer for Relational & NoSQL Databases. It can be evaluated 15 days for free. After that a paid License must be purchased.

It can be used to generate a ERD for Postgresql as well as other databases.

Downloading installer

Installers are available to download for various platforms (Linux, Windows and MacOS).

Installing and running DbSchema on Linux

To install run following commands in your shell:

wget https://dbschema.com/download/DbSchema_unix_8_2_5.tar.gz
tar xf DbSchema_unix_8_2_5.tar.gz
cd DbSchema
chmod +x DbSchema_unix_8_x_x.sh

To run DbSchema:

./DbSchema_unix_8_x_x.sh

Note: Dependent on the downloaded version (e.g. 8_2_5) the commands above may change (i.e. replace 8_x_x with downloaded 8_2_5).

edited Dec 18 '19 at 05:21

hc_dev

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answered Jul 16 '12 at 14:22

Subbu

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is there any thing to install to make this work in windows. I am using pgadmin III is there a way to make some reverse engineering for getting the ERD diagrams – 09Q71AO534 Oct 15 '13 at 14:00
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It isn't free or open source – momeara Jul 08 '14 at 14:51
I find this program to be unreliable. I can't even connect to the database even though it's installed locally – puk Aug 02 '15 at 06:13
Appears to work well, but note: "DbSchema Ultimate Edition can be evaluated ( trial ) for 15 days after installation. After this period the application will switch to Free Edition with limited features and number of tables." [ http://www.dbschema.com/index.html | http://www.dbschema.com/editions.html ] – Victoria Stuart May 19 '17 at 22:07
Seems DBSchema has **no _Free Edition_ anymore**, but still 15-days trial. Suggested update to this post including links. – hc_dev Dec 17 '19 at 21:09

score 7 · Answer 3 · answered Jan 24 '14 at 03:23

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You may try DbVisualizer. In my opinion, DbVisualizer in references graphs has met my needs in generating ERD from existing database.

answered Jan 24 '14 at 03:23

metamorph

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I can confirm it works very well. It has good auto-routing functions and decent manual positioning support. It can export the image at arbitrary resolution (just set the zoom level) but if you need some minor graphical tweaks, such as coloring the boxes or adding captions, you can export as SVG and edit it in Inkscape. http://www.dbvis.com/images/features/screens/referencesGraph.png – Tobia Apr 08 '16 at 17:47

score 0 · Answer 4 · answered May 30 '10 at 09:15

0

What about SQL Power Architect? Works for many databases, PostgreSQL included, and on many operating systems.

answered May 30 '10 at 09:15

Frank Heikens

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Black and white squares. No drop-shadows, no rounded corners, no grouping (?), doesn't automatically prevent lines from being covered. – Dave Jarvis May 30 '10 at 16:51