Well, you can use ErWin actually you will use database design tools only for very very big projects where you have thousands of tables and you need to manage them. In most cases it’s more than enough to use a tool like TOAD or SQLNavigator
I personally have never used any kind of database software aside from a pencil and paper to diagram relationships. Like Deacalion side, use the forms of database normalization to get to 4NF. If you don't know what 4NF is then you need to research more the concepts of database design and relational databases, tool or no tool being used.
Learn database normalization and the different normal forms to create relational databases. Just get a beginners book on SQL databases, and it should teach you that stuff.
if you're not building a database with hundreds of tables you'll be fine with no design tools, pen and paper maybe ( if necessary ). You should be more worried about understanding what normalization is. Basically you should always avoid redundant data. If you think a field will often contain the same text value, then probably there's a better way to do it. ( This is just an idea of it, search google for database normalization practices ). If your db is not normalized it will require way more space than necessary, it will be a hell to maintain it and correctly update everything, and will be slower than it could be.
First and foremost, you should understand and analyze your requirements. The DB design must be able to meet the requirements of the application that will use the database later, and solve record keeping problems that require a database to answer. A well designed database is useless unless it is able to meet the requirements, but a simple yet properly crafted DB is always best.
Hi, I will suggest some simple steps to do the data base design manually if your tables are considerably less. 1. Analyze the situation to gather information about the proposed Data Base. 2. Decide on columns, data types,and lengths of data. 3. Normalize the data into tables.[ist NF,II NF,IIINF,IV NF,VNF] 4. Create the Data base and tables. If your data base is small use SQL Server, If it is bigger use <a href="http://www.wiziq.com/online-tests/895-free-practice-test-oca-oracle-certified-associate"> Oracle.</a> Regards Kolla Sanjeeva Rao OCP[Oracle 9i]