I hear you on the advantage of linking for the physical model - otherwise its out of date before its done. However, that means its not really a modeling tool. That's why the third party products are needed; so that you can work with the logical and conceptual models and not be tied to the physical too early.

In the end, it has to be implemented as a physical model, of course, and that's where it's good to get back the "truth".

By the way, the article itself is very nice and useful. I'd had some trouble navigating around it before, so for using the tool itself, the article is a big help.