A CASE tool that guides relational database design, step by step
designER is a web application that guides database designers through the entire relational design process: from the conceptual Entity-Relationship schema, through the restructuring phase, to generating the SQL code that creates the tables. Built together with Andrea Avignone, Silvia Chiusano and Paolo Garza at Politecnico di Torino, it’s aimed especially at learners — or anyone who wants a tool that catches common mistakes before they become hard-to-fix problems after implementation.
What sets it apart from existing tools
Tools like Microsoft Visio or Lucidchart let you draw an Entity-Relationship diagram, but leave it to the designer to spot errors and translate the schema into relational tables by hand. designER goes a step further:
- Only enables the options valid for the selected construct, preventing incorrect schemas from being generated
- Automatically flags warnings, errors, and serious errors — explaining what’s wrong and how to fix it
- Guides the restructuring phase (removing generalizations, composite and multi-valued attributes) with the correct options for each case
- Translates the restructured schema into relational tables, generating the final SQL DDL code
Validated in the field
Used to support the Database Systems course at Politecnico di Torino, evaluated by 96 students: a System Usability Scale score of 76.17 out of 100, well above the 68 reference threshold. Between 80% and 96% of students found it useful across every step of the process — creation, restructuring, translation, and table generation.
The work was published in Information (MDPI, 2025) and is freely accessible and usable by anyone, with nothing to install.