Shazam, just like a lightning bolt, the database-designer hits paydirt. Oh, creativity hits hard like that. Darn, I’m away from my desktop. Oh, yeah, no worries champ. Just google “draw.io” or go to diagrams.net, immediately your friendly, “‘Save diagrams to:” prompt shows up and you’ve recorded your masterful database diagram concept. The screen you see from your workstation is pretty much the same as on your phone or mobile device so learning curve is low if your own the go.

You can easily manipulate the user interface on your touch screen with just your finger. Adding multiple pages is easy. Make a mistake, no problem, the undo button is right up at the top, just under the app.diagrams.net and your mistake is undone. If you make a really bad mistake, just hit the undo button several times to move as far back as you need.

So far, I like draw.io and I’ll be exploring more of its features. I admit, I found it easier to work out the designs at my desk where everything is quiet, and I’m focused. However, on the go, even in a busy restaurant, one could be productive. So, if you need something free, clean and professional, anytime, anywhere, this web application has a lot of capabilities.

My top things I like about it. First it is free, no cost to try it out. Second, in terms of resources consumed, there is very little footprint on your workstation or mobile device. The cost of keeping that file is just the file itself! The software needed to manipulate it is run on diagrams.net so you don’t have to install anything. Third I like the added benefits of different diagram types because whether student or professional, sometimes you just need to put the concept out in the visual realm. How can you not like all the different flow charts?

If you do any case studies or process mapping to go with your software programming and database design work, you can keep both your ERD diagrams and use case diagrams in the same platform. Thats a nice bonus. It’s all very easy to use. You can save all your work from whatever device you’re on and access it later.

As far as cons, not much to say at this point. The learning curve is not bad, you just have to play around with it a bit. I found I could duplicate rows and edit cells easily enough. I was happy it responded to a control+c keyboard command ( to copy an object). Little touches like that give me confidence.