Reverse Engineering: MySQL WorkBench

In last post I talked about creating sequence diagrams using MaintainJ. Another important aspect you would want to understand for a Project is the database schema design. How many tables are there? How do they interact with each other? etc.

For understanding this design the best way is to look into ER or Entity Relationship diagram. Ideally one would create the ER diagram first and then implement database.

In case we do not have a ER diagram available we can create using Reverse Engineering the database to ER diagram.

For MySQL, we can use MySQL WorkBench tool to create one.

Download the installer from https://www.mysql.com/products/workbench/

Once installed, you can connect to you mysql database in workbench. Then in Database Tab at the top, select Reverse Engineer option, and select the schema you want to reverse engineer.