Presenter: Lule Ahmedi
Session: 5
Room: MainRoom

Since the evolvement of software engineering as a new discipline in computer science, the role of database design within the database software life-cycle has gained in importance. This has contributed towards increase in availability of CASE tools which aid in database design.
There are dozens of CASE tools for developing any software including databases, and tools for UML design, but rather still few of them supporting entity-relationship (ER) database design. We will make an overview of available free and open source ER diagramming tools, and the features they support. Portability, uniformity, forward and reverse engineering, documentation of requirements, ease of use, conformance in front of database development standards, and the modeling notations supported are some of the features considered when introducing each of these tools. Semi-structured (XML) data and ontologies, and their impact in current and future trends in CASE tools for database modeling and design conclude our discussion.