Although I have been back in the development camp the last few years, when I was a DBA I used 3rd party tools "with caution" ... e.g., backup the database(s) first before using the tool. I found that in most cases the "maintenance" tools were right on, and we continued to use them. But the tools to script changes in the database (e.g. create table, alter table, etc) were not as useful as they were made out to be.

True, the company I was contracted to could have allowed the developers and DBAs time to "do it right" and design it up front (instead of constant changes to the database structure) so that we wouldn't need such a tool, but being a small company needing to react quickly to their client's needs they didn't always have that option.