Visio and Dia?

[Luke Francl <fran0382@tc.umn.edu>]

Hi All,

My boss and I are writing an article for publication about the database
backed website we made [1]. For this article, I'd like to create some
diagrams of the data model and the server setup and things like that. I
could do it in Photoshop or xfig, but I'm not real big on graphics anymore
and don't really *want* to. 

I've heard about a program for Gnome called Dia
(http://www.gnome.org/gnome-office/dia.shtml and
http://www.lysator.liu.se/~alla/dia/dia.html) which seeks to emulate the
functionality of the $$$ data modeling program for Windows, Visio
(http://www.microsoft.com/office/visio/) which is now owned by Microsoft
and part of the Office suite.

Does anyone have any exprience with either of these programs (esp. Dia,
because Visio costs a lot of money, so it's doubtful I could get it)? I
need a compelling reason to get my boss to pursuade the IT support people
to let me switch to Linux on my desktop. This *might* be it!

Thanks for any input,
Luke

[1] I work for the University of Minnesota Libraries, www.lib.umn.edu if
your curious. It's nothing special from a .com standpoint, but radical
from a library standpoint. And no, going to 800x600 was NOT my idea.