Sql – What GOOD tools are available for generating ERD from a SQL Server Database?

erdsqlsql-server

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.

Best Solution

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:

MS SQL Server management Studio > File menu > "Connect Object Explorer"
Choose your Database node and expand it. under this node you'll find a sub-node called "Database Diagrams"
Right click on "Database Diagrams" > "New Database Diagram" > Add tables that you wish to see their columns, relationships, ...

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Sql – Solutions for INSERT OR UPDATE on SQL Server

don't forget about transactions. Performance is good, but simple (IF EXISTS..) approach is very dangerous.
When multiple threads will try to perform Insert-or-update you can easily get primary key violation.

Solutions provided by @Beau Crawford & @Esteban show general idea but error-prone.

To avoid deadlocks and PK violations you can use something like this:

begin tran
if exists (select * from table with (updlock,serializable) where key = @key)
begin
   update table set ...
   where key = @key
end
else
begin
   insert into table (key, ...)
   values (@key, ...)
end
commit tran

begin tran
   update table with (serializable) set ...
   where key = @key

   if @@rowcount = 0
   begin
      insert into table (key, ...) values (@key,..)
   end
commit tran

Sql – How to return only the Date from a SQL Server DateTime datatype

SELECT DATEADD(dd, 0, DATEDIFF(dd, 0, @your_date))

for example

SELECT DATEADD(dd, 0, DATEDIFF(dd, 0, GETDATE()))

gives me

2008-09-22 00:00:00.000

Pros:

No varchar<->datetime conversions required
No need to think about locale

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Sql – Solutions for INSERT OR UPDATE on SQL Server

Sql – How to return only the Date from a SQL Server DateTime datatype

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