chinook-database VS Mermaid

schemacrawler/chinook-database builds on the earlier project. The project has an automatic build using GitHub Actions, which pulls scripts from lerocha/chinook-database, cleans them up, and converts them all to UTF-8 with consistent line-endings. Then are are repacked and redistributed in various ways - as a Java jar file for use in Java programs or in tests with database in Testcontainers. The SQLite database can be directly download from the project site. But probably the best way to use the package it is use the Docker image from schemacrawler/chinook-database to create the Chinook database on a database of your choice, whether the database server is running on a separate host or within a Docker container itself.

Try it out. Make sure that you have Docker installed on your system, or download SchemaCrawler. Download a sample SQLite database called "chinook-database-2.0.1.sqlite" into your current directory. Create a text file called "mermaid.py" with the following contents:

The command assumes that a SQLite database called "chinook-database-2.0.1.sqlite" is in your current directory. A file called "output.png" will be generated with the database schema, including foreign key relationships. You can generate PDF files, and other types of output too. Go through the SchemaCrawler tutorials on Katacoda to learn more SchemaCrawler commands. If you are using PowerShell on Windows, replace the trailing backslash on each line with a back-tick.

Mermaid JS is a tool that lets you create diagrams and charts such as flowcharts, sequence diagrams, Gantt charts using simple text commands. It works by converting your text commands into a graphical representation that you can customize and share. https://mermaid.live/

I'm not OP, but I just ask GPT to turn code or process or whatever else into a mermaid diagram. Most of the time I don't even need to few-shot prompt it with examples. Then you dump the resulting text into something like https://mermaid.live/ and voilà.

I like excalidraw for live discussions but if I want to make more detailed or better looking diagrams, I really enjoy these two tools:

- For drag-and-drop/WYSIWYG, I really like DrawIO. They have a web version https://app.diagrams.net/ but I strongly recommend the desktop version https://github.com/jgraph/drawio-desktop/releases/

- For text-as-diagram, I think Mermaid wins this by default since GitHub added markdown support for these: https://mermaid.live/ (This was github's announcement https://github.blog/2022-02-14-include-diagrams-markdown-fil... )

After hours without being able to solve this problem, I decided to make the chart directly in Mermaid's live editor and export it to PNG and SVG. The big problem is that the letters are still too small, the quality of the PNG is very low, and the SVG only works on the web, not with other applications like PowerPoint and Inkscape.

You can export to PNG and other formats in the Mermaid editor https://mermaid.live/

Copy paste code here: https://mermaid.live