Visualization of databases with ConceptDraw PRO

Working with databases one often faces a task of visualization of structure or data. As in many other cases, visual presentation of information helps a specialist in making decisions.

Creation of diagrams, be they ORM, ER - diagrams, relational diagrams or whatever, has become a traditional method in projection of databases. Preliminary projection makes you document business rules, and determines the way the database will reflect your rules of business. It allows to detect bottlenecks in advance, and simplifies maintenance; the database structure and all accepted compromises become documented. Some client applications of relational MDBS allow creating relations between tables with the use of database model diagram only. Documenting in diagrams also makes information exchange easier among developers or between developers and clients (depending on the chosen abstraction level). So diagrams are not the least important in creation of databases.

Everything in the world is constantly changing. Business-requirements to informational systems is not an exception. As a result, such systems are constantly being enlarged, extended and integrated. Their number has greatly increased, and they have become more functional. Sooner or later it becomes clear that time for fundamental changes has come, and reengineering is vital. No matter what the reason for reengineering is: the leading developer's leaving, worsened relationships with the platform supplier, the changed level of technical support, the contractor's financial status or the morally aged system. In any case, your database needs migration or modernization. For instance, the new developer needs to thoroughly know the system he has to work with now. It is good if its structure has been well documented. And what if no documentation has initially been kept? And what if chaotic changes have been made ever since? And finally, what if you just need a visual start document for making changes in the database structure? In all such cases you need to solve the reverse problem: building a database model (on any abstraction level) on a pre-ready basis.

Problem 3. Databases are usually created for storage and use of large information arrays. Due to this visual technique, presenting data in the form of various diagrams and charts is more convenient.

You are lucky if you have a handy and visual client for your MDBS. However, it is not always so, especially as for Macintosh platform. Besides, MDBS clients do not normally solve the problem of data graphic representation.

All the spectrum of the above mentioned questions can be solved by using ConceptDraw. Package ConceptDraw PRO Professional includes a number of libraries with ready-to-use objects that are intended to simplify drawing of database diagrams of various kinds: ORM, Chen ERD and Martin ERD, Express-G and relational diagrams. These libraries allow to considerably simplify diagramdrawing in a ConceptDraw-document up to just dragging the needed images out of the library and entering the corresponding text.

Connectors make displaying of interconnections easier among the diagram elements: once you interconnected two table fields, they will remain so even if either of them is shifted.

Rich possibilities on setting text properties and ready-to-use objects for creation of a background allow to beautifully design diagrams; and the set of export supported formats (various vector and raster graphic formats, PDF, Power Point, Flash, HTML (with hyperlinks)) simplify the process of information exchange with your colleagues and business partners.

With the appearance of the scripting programming language ConceptDraw Basic in ConceptDraw, the spectrum of tasks that can attract developers who work with databases has greatly increased. ConceptDraw Basic supports work with ODBC-compatible databases. It allows to receive and change information on the structure and the data of any DB, only if you have the appropriate ODBC-driver and DSN installed.

In the ConceptDraw PRO Professional package there is included Database Model Diagram wizard (it can be found among the templates in the section ERD & Database). This wizard uses ConceptDraw Basic, for solving the reverse engineering problem: building of a model of arbitrary database which the user represented by DSN.

Another example - building of a diagram on the data taken from the DB table. This will help visualize any statistics.

If due to any reason you intend to process the information received by means of ConceptDraw Basic in some other applications, you can save it in a voluntary text format. And vice versa, in case the information on a database you need is in some text format it can be read by means of ConceptDraw Basic. The power of the scripting language repeatedly increase if you use the functions exported by the external shared libraries. ConceptDraw Basic features such a possibility.

If you prefer to use only graphic possibilities of ConceptDraw, an alternative variant can be used then: data is processed by some third-party application and is saved in one of the open ConceptDraw formats. The program supports the four following formats: Flow Data Format, Outline, XML for ConceptDraw and XML for Visio.

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