The ORM Foundation

I have released tkz-orm, a LaTeX package to draw ORM2 diagrams by using the TikZ package. See here for an example and here for the documentation. You need the CVS version of TikZ in order to use tkz-orm (a build is available at texamples). The full package is free software / open source, so you don't need any commercial softwarelike Visual Studio in order to create ORM2 diagrams- and you can hack it Of course feedback is very appreciated.

 

Hi Jakob,

Thanks for posting information about this new tool.
After looking at your examples, I'm wondering if tkz-orm is more like an alternative to using the Visio ORM Stencils rather than an alternative to NORMA.

Have I understood the tkz-orm function correctly or am I missing something?

Ken

PS: You can download the Visio Stencils from: http://www.ormfoundation.org/files/folders/visio_stencils/default.aspx

 

TikZ is a fully programmable language to create graphics which makes it both powerful and complex. Maybe tkz-orm can better be compared to Visio ORM Stencils because its purpose is only to create ORM2 diagrams and not all of the features that NORMA provides. I created the tool to embed ORM2 diagrams in my LaTeX documents - I don't have a Visio license and I don't use Windows anyway. Maybe I am wrong but I think that one reason for the low acceptance of ORM in general is its focus on commercial environments - the average developer just cannot simple make use of ORM while there are tons of ERM and UML tools.

 Sweet! Contact me if you want help writing code to generate tkz-orm code from NORMA diagrams (or later, from CQL diagrams, when implemented).

Your example seem to rely on at least some dynamic layout, rather than fixed coordinates. That's nice; did you implement it? On the other hand, I find them a little "tight" - is it possible to increase the margins?

I moved the project to github where you can better follow its development, add feature requests and bug reports etc. Placing the nodes must be done manually but TikZ helps you with some dynamic layout capabilities. It also supports changing the default margins and other parts of the layout. It's not clear to me which part of the diagram is too "tight" - is it the distance between entity types and roles?