I too, have been surprised by the dropping of the DDL generation, error
checking, and schema synchronization functionality.
As I have experienced, Visio 2002 Enterprise Architect is not compatible
with SQL Server 2005. I upgraded to Visio 2007 Professional, only to be
disappointed and surprised that this central functionality has been
inexplicably dropped.
It was difficult for me to find out, but searching the internet it seems
that Visio for Enterprise Architects in the current MSDN subscription
supports this crucial feature.
Would this version of Visio support SQL Server 2008?
There are few lower cost alternatives these days, and it is hard to find a
DB tool that integrates smoothly w/ the latest editions of MS SQL server.
Thus there is more pressure to go the route of DBDesigner 4/MySQL when
starting projects with complex database needs. Which is unfortunate, since
Microsoft SQL Server is a great product series. (It's an MS product that I
actually praise, among my open source LAMP developer colleagues.)
MS Sql Server, IMO, is in fact a central foundation of data centric
development using MS technologies. There should be some guidance, somewhere,
as to how to continue to design complex databases for MS Sql Server into the
future. Directing us to rely on the Database Diagram feature of SQL Server
is not a good fit, because of the need to prototype, print out, share vsd's,
and to visually think out different changes to existing DB's, and then to
create the DDL to migrate synchronization scripts on production servers.
Visio has also been an appropriate tool for DB architecture because of good
print features, and the ability to add annotations and other shapes.