The goal in this Discussion is to gain experience using a Computer Aided Software Engineering tool to draw an Entity Relationship Diagram and report on your experience to your classmates. You are not required to make any comments or ask questions this week but you are welcome to do so. There is only one Thread this week to allow you to time to experiment with one or more CASE tools.

Thread 1

Find a CASE tool that you can use to draw and Entity Relationship Diagram that you can download without using a credit card. This reference could help. You might also try a search on (“open source” ERD).  
1. Download and install this tool on your computer.
2. Use it to draw the small Entity Relationship Diagram that appears in Figure 8-7 on page 279 of your textbook. Do not try to reproduce it exactly.  Take advantage of what your selected tool will do easily.  You can skip putting the words “holds” and “has” on the relationships unless this is very easy to do.

Answer the following questions in this Discussion thread:
1. What CASE tool did you select? (give a URL so others can find it)
2. What else will this tool do beside draw Entity Relationship Diagrams?
3. What was your experience in installing this tool?  
4. What problems did you experience is using the tool to draw the diagram?
5. What did you learn from this exercise?