Open source software is becoming increasingly popular and many organizations are using them, such as apache (used by over 50% of the world’s web servers) and Linux (a popular operating system). There exist mixed opinions about the quality of this type of software.
The purpose of this study is to evaluate quality of open source CASE-tools and compare it with quality of proprietary CASE-tools. The evaluation concerns tools used for database modeling, where the DDL-generation capabilities of these tools are studied. The study is performed as a case study where one open source (two, after experiencing some difficulties with the first tool) and one proprietary tool are studied.
The results of this study indicate that open source database modeling CASE-tools are not ready to challenge proprietary tools. However software developed as open source usually evolve rapidly (compared to proprietary software) and a more mature open source tool could emerge in the near future.