EDM designer as reverse engineering tool

22 Apr 2010 1 mins Databases in general, Entity Framework

Yesterday there was a question in one list I’m following. Simply to share some recommendation for tool being able to reverse engineer the database structure and show some E-R diagram.

After I get time to reply with some suggestions, idea came to my head. The EDM designer is actually kind of reverse engineering tool. Did you realized that?

As the EF support for major database platforms is available it’s easy to get a basic overview of the database structure without leaving Visual Studio. Sure it doesn’t have some cool features of specialized programs, but on the other hand it’s already in VS (Express edition is free) and you don’t have to buy and install another product (if you’re not doing this often, but then you’re probably using the specialized program).

Jiří Činčura is .NET, C# and Firebird expert. He focuses on data and business layers, language constructs, parallelism, databases and performance. For almost two decades he contributes to open-source, i.e. FirebirdClient. He works as a senior software engineer for Microsoft. Frequent speaker and blogger at www.tabsoverspaces.com.