MacLochlainns Weblog

Somebody asked me if there was a cheaper alternative to using the Embarcadero Data Architect (a data modeling tool). I said sure, you can use the MySQL Workbench. My friend laughed and said, it’s to model Oracle databases and they use different data types. I broke the news to him that he can create his own user defined types and use MySQL Workbench to model problems for the Oracle Database 11g.

For example, you can launch the MySQL Workbench, and click on the Model menu option, and in the menu window click on the User Defined Types choice, as shown in the following:

Choosing the User Defined Type option, launches the following form. You can enter customized user defined types in the User Defined Types module:

You enter user defined types by entering a name value and choosing valid MySQL type value before clicking the Add button. When you’ve added your last user defined type, click the OK button instead of the Add button. The next screen shot shows how you can create Oracle Database 11g native data types, specifically the NUMBER and VARCHAR2 data types.

Hopefully, this has shown that you can create User Defined Types let you use MySQL Workbench to create Oracle ERD models. Here’s an example of a table with Oracle’s NUMBER and VARCHAR2 data types:

Yes, MySQL Workbench is a marvelous tool with wide potential for use to solve problems with MySQL and other databases.