I'm working with two complex database schemas in a MySQL project.
The MySQL admin tools don't appear to have a robust GUI for viewing and editing schemas.
I'm looking into getting a copy of ERWIN, and one of my colleagues is using the free versions of DBVisualizer.
Any other recommendations from those of you with more MySQL experience?

Thanks

i personally have used only one tool with mysql -- dbdesigner -- and i thought it was 'orrible, guv, just 'orrible

more here --
http://databaseanswers.org/modelling_tools.htm

Well, I can't get ERWIN to connect to my database.
And Embarcadero mentions support for MySQL on their website, but it does not appear in a (very limited) dropdown list of database engines.

Check out Power*Architect

Fast, free download.
Installed correctly, first time, in less than five minutes.
Connected to my target database in 60 seconds.
Does what I want it to do.

Calling Microsoft.....are you paying attention?

It does have some drawbacks

The thing I miss most is the ability to define check constraints (not something a MySQL user will miss though)

The comparison of the model against a working database does not produce the best results (it reports columns as changed that aren't)

And the SQL Generation is not 100% perfect (e.g. for SQL Server it generates Scripts with no Semicolon as a delimiter which means the script can only be run using MS Tools)

But apart from that, I think it's quite nice and the guys from SQL*Power are very open to suggestions and questions in the forum

While it only does documentation, and requires MySQL 5.0 or later to do that, I'd recomend SQLSpec for doing documentation of MySQL (and many other database engine) databases. SQLSpec us relatively cheap, fast, and has great support.

-PatP

Have you tried MySQL Workbench?

http://dev.mysql.com/downloads/workbench/5.0.html

Cheers, JP