Blog
-
Building a Schema With an AI Agent Without Naming a Single Column
I described a discussion board in business terms and let an agent build it. Every column name came from my team's word list — including the one most tools get wrong.
-
ISO 11179 Naming Conventions: What the Standard Says, and Why It's Hard to Follow
ISO/IEC 11179 gets cited in every data governance document and followed in almost no schema. Here's the naming structure the standard actually specifies, the step it deliberately leaves out, and what it takes to run it on a real database.
-
An Azimutt and StackRender Alternative for Teams With Naming Standards
An honest comparison of Azimutt, StackRender, and Sqemo — one explores the database you have, one generates the schema you want, and neither decides what things are called.
-
A drawSQL and QuickDBD Alternative for Teams With Naming Standards
An honest comparison of drawSQL, QuickDBD, and Sqemo — what each one optimizes for, and why the diagram is rarely the thing that outlives the project.
-
Data Dictionary vs Business Glossary: What's the Difference, and Why They Drift
An honest comparison of the data dictionary and the business glossary — what each one is for, why teams keep them in separate tools, and why that separation is the reason both go stale.
-
An ERD MCP Server: AI Agents That Follow Your Naming Standard
AI agents already write schema code. An MCP server for your ERD makes them follow your team's naming standard instead of their training-data habits — here's how that works, and where it doesn't.
-
A Free ERD Tool With No Signup — And What That Actually Means
Most 'free' ERD tools mean free-with-an-account. Here's what no-signup really buys you, what it trades away, and when creating an account is worth it after all.
-
DBML vs SQL DDL: Which Should Define Your Schema?
An honest comparison of DBML and SQL DDL — what each format is actually for, where DBML's simplicity breaks down, and why the real question is what your source of truth is.
-
A dbdiagram Alternative for Teams With Naming Standards
An honest comparison of dbdiagram and Sqemo — where dbdiagram's text-first workflow shines, and when a word-list-driven ERD tool is the better fit.
-
Logical vs. Physical Data Models: Why the Separation Matters
What logical and physical data models each capture, why collapsing them into one diagram causes naming drift, and how a stable link between the two keeps schemas honest.
-
Database Naming Conventions: A Practical Guide
Concrete rules for naming tables and columns — case style, singular vs. plural, abbreviations, keys and constraints — and how to make a team actually follow them.