ER diagrams to DDL and back again
drawDB is an entity-relationship diagram editor that runs in the browser and needs no account. You place tables, columns and relationships on a canvas, and it writes the CREATE script for the database engine you picked. Paste or upload an existing DDL script and it rebuilds the diagram. The code is AGPL-3.0, and the editor runs either on the project's site or from a Docker image.
Schema import without handing over credentials
- To bring in a live database, drawDB gives you a read-only query to run in your own SQL client, then you paste back the single value it returns. Credentials stay on your machine.
- MySQL, PostgreSQL, SQLite, MariaDB, SQL Server and Oracle each have their own SQL importer and exporter. PostgreSQL diagrams can also use custom types, enums, arrays and materialized views.
- An auto-connect command draws foreign keys for columns that follow the usual naming pattern, such as
user_idpointing at theidkey ofusers. - Exports cover PNG, JPEG, SVG and PDF, plus Mermaid, DBML and a Markdown data dictionary listing columns, types, constraints and indexes.
- Given two saved versions, drawDB writes the migration script, up and down.
- The Docker image reads the sharing server's URL at startup, so switching servers needs no rebuild.
Browser storage, gist-backed versions, a paid Pro tier
Diagrams live in the browser's IndexedDB. The site tells free users to back them up before clearing browser data, and a menu command downloads every diagram and custom template as a ZIP of JSON files. Self-hosting leaves this as it is: the Docker image builds the app with Node 20 and serves it as static files from Nginx.
Sharing, version history and migrations depend on drawdb-server. That second repository (TypeScript, MIT) talks to the GitHub API with a token and stores shared diagrams and their versions as gists created under that token. Without the server, no versions get recorded and the migration generator has nothing to diff. For migrations with no backend, Thoth Blueprint, another browser-based schema editor, generates Laravel, TypeORM or Django migration files from a locally stored schema.
A diagram is bound to one SQL dialect. Only the generic mode exports to every engine, and the interface warns that it supports few data types. Migrations are unavailable for generic diagrams.
The project's site compares drawDB with nine tools, dbdiagram.io and MySQL Workbench among them. Its alternatives page sets its drag-and-drop canvas against dbdiagram.io's code-first DSL, and a no-install editor against a desktop app built for MySQL. The hosted site also sells a Pro tier that adds cloud sync, teams and real-time collaboration. For self-hosted instances, the README covers only sharing through drawdb-server, and the editor states that a shared link does not start a live collaboration session.
Latest tag: v1.8.2, from 29 September 2026. The repository ships tags, not GitHub releases, so there are no release notes. v1.8.0 and v1.8.1 came out in early July 2026, and the last commit landed on 24 October 2026. Oracle carries a "Beta" label in the editor and is missing from the site's list of fully supported engines.