Decipher database schema [closed]

Question

I've recently inherited the job of maintaining a database that wasn't designed very well and the designers aren't available to ask any questions. And I have a couple more coming my way in the near future.

It's been tough trying to figure out the relationships between the tables without any kind of visual aid or database diagram.

I was wondering what tools are recommended for this. I know about Visio, but I was hoping there were some good open source/freeware applications out there. I don't need it to change the database at all. Just read it and create some kind of visual aid to help me understand how things are laid out and try to figure out what the designer was thinking about how the data should relate.

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Additional answer data: SchemaSpy was the kind of thing I was looking for, but having not done a lot with the command line in ages, I opted to use SchemaSpyGUI. There was also some configuration to get used to since I don't work with Java much, but the end result was what I was looking for (on open-source replacement for Visio's ER diagrams).

Answer 1

Try SchemaSpy. I ran it against a rather complex database and I was quite pleased by the result, with advice on optimization.