I was wondering if anyone knows some good software, preferably free doesn't matter. That can help design Database structures for websites etc...or I should say helps map it out.

I use Visio...

What is this visio you speak of.

http://office.microsoft.com/visio

harri01: three posts, three anchor-text-geared link drops. Are you by any chance involved with the web designing company in question? I'm sure it's just an astonishing coincidence.

You know what's even more of a coincidence? Another "member" pulled a similar stunt (although without the anchor text).

http://www.webmaster-talk.com/search...earchid=569974

Someone should call Ripley and explain this miracle of modern forum science.

BlueMage: you may find Access (from the same Office family as Visio) works the best for you. I've been using it since 2000 and on some pretty fair-sized retail/e-commerce sites at that. If you can build a database properly (and there are tons of tutorials online to teach you how to do so, coupled with your own ingenuity if you have any), and you can code properly (that'll be a lot harder), you'll be able to do quite a bit with it.

Access is one of Microsoft's best-kept secrets. It's surprisingly powerful IF used correctly and IF its limitations are understood (there are some things it just can't do, and then you'll have to upsize to SQL Server). It's just that it gets a bad rep, and unjustifiably so, because most people don't get it.

I am also using Microsoft Visio for this application

Smart Draw has a free trial http://www.smartdraw.com/

Your best working out your database plan on paper first... Write down all the information you expect to store along with what format the information will be in (numbers, text etc) and then how the information is related... So for example you may have a table for members which links to a table called posts. You define the relationship and say ok each post is started by a member... I find that working it out on paper in plain english is easier than getting some software to make mistakes that are hard to fix later

If you know about UML representation of your schemas, argoUml ( http://argouml.tigris.org/ ) can be useful.

Thanks Thierry. Looks like a good tool. I downloaded it and will give it a try.

Have you tried Toad. There is a freeware version

http://www.casestudio.com/enu/databa..._freeware.aspx

I could not tell in any substance how much I hate toad...
I have the obligation to use it at work, and it crashes at least 5 times a day, on any computer of the dev. room (8 machines) with randoms memory errors...

And for those curious about it, toad is an IDE ( read "clutered mess of non understandable functions") for oracle (originally, now for some others too) databases .

Even if sql developper is a mess too, at least it works 8 hours straight without crashing every 2 hours...

I use navicat. Don't really need to , since I know how to do it manually, but it makes it simpler and faster.