Simple Diagrams of MySQL Schema

Jess Robinson’s SQL-Translator CPAN module translates and parses SQL statements. The SQLfairy project has some nice binaries that, among other things, use GraphViz or GD to draw pseudo-ER diagrams from SQL CREATE statements. Drawing a diagram of an SQL schema is as easy as sqlt-diagram --db=MySQL -o schema.png -i png -t "title" --color --gutter 100 -c 2 schema-erd.sql. There are a few minor issues - the program seems to choke on the LOCK TABLES statements in mysqldump output. But overall, the results are quite nice. The script can take (as easy as putting it in a Makefile) mysqldump output and generate a diagram like the one below, including foreign key constraints. I also found a simple intro and example in a post on Neil Saunders‘ blog.