Entity Relationship Diagram Symbols

The semantic modeling method nowadays is successfully applied in database structure design. It is effective method of modeling the data structures, which is based on the meaning of these data. As a tool of semantic modeling, there are used different types of Entity-Relationship Diagrams. Entity Relationship Diagram (ERD) is applied to visually and clearly represent a structure of a business database. The main components of ERDs are: entity, relation and attributes. An entity is a class of similar objects in the model, each entity is depicted in the form of rectangle and has the name expressed by a noun. Relation is shown in the form of non-directional line that connects two entities. There are several notation styles used for ERDs: information engineering style, Chen style, Bachman style, Martin Style. The Entity Relationship Diagram symbols used for professional ERD drawing are predesigned by professionals and collected in the libraries of the Entity-Relationship Diagram (ERD) solution for ConceptDraw PRO software.

ERD Symbols and Meanings

Entity Relationship Diagram (ERD) is a popular software engineering tool for database modeling and illustration the logical structure of databases, which uses one of two notations - Chen's or Crow’s Foot. Crow's foot notation is effective when used in software engineering, information engineering, structured systems analysis and design. Each of these notations applies its own set of ERD symbols. Crow's foot diagrams use boxes to represent entities and lines between these boxes to show relationships. Varied shapes at the ends of lines depict the cardinality of a given relationship. Chen's ERD notation is more detailed way to represent entities and relationships. ConceptDraw PRO application enhanced with all-inclusive Entity-Relationship Diagram (ERD) solution allows design professional ER diagrams with Chen's or Crow’s Foot notation on your choice. It contains the full set of ready-to-use standardized ERD symbols and meanings helpful for quickly drawing, collection of predesigned ERD samples, examples and templates. ConceptDraw Pro is a great alternative to Visio for Mac users as it offers more features and can easily handle the most demanding professional needs.

Basic Flowchart Symbols and Meaning

Flowcharts are the best for visually representation the business processes and the flow of a custom-order process through various departments within an organization. ConceptDraw PRO diagramming and vector drawing software extended with Flowcharts solution offers the full set of predesigned basic flowchart symbols which are gathered at two libraries: Flowchart and Flowcharts Rapid Draw. Among them are: process, terminator, decision, data, document, display, manual loop, and many other specific symbols. The meaning for each symbol offered by ConceptDraw gives the presentation about their proposed use in professional Flowcharts for business and technical processes, software algorithms, well-developed structures of web sites, Workflow diagrams, Process flow diagram and correlation in developing on-line instructional projects or business process system. Use of ready flow chart symbols in diagrams is incredibly useful - you need simply drag desired from the libraries to your document and arrange them in required order. There are a few serious alternatives to Visio for Mac, one of them is ConceptDraw PRO. It is one of the main contender with the most similar features and capabilities.

Product Overview

The role of ConceptDraw MINDMAP is to organize and plan idea development and communicate between process participants. Mind maps are convenient to prepare presentations for team and management and send task lists and related information.

DFD Library — Design elements

Data Flow Diagrams (DFD) solution from the Software Development area of ConceptDraw Solution Park provides plenty of predesigned templates, samples and DFD vector design elements proposed by three DFD libraries. These DFD library objects are designed to help you effectively model the data flows and functional requirements for the business processes or systems, to design the Process-oriented models or Data-oriented models, Data flowcharts and Data process diagrams, Structured analysis diagrams and Information flow diagrams. There are two different notations used to draw the Data Flow Diagrams (Yourdon & Coad and Gane & Sarson). These notations define the different visual representations for the processes, data stores, data flows, and external entities. ConceptDraw PRO software provides you with possibility of designing professional-looking Data Flow Diagrams, DFD Models, Data Flow Process Diagrams using any of these notations. Simply drag the predesigned DFD flowchart symbols from the appropriate library and connect by arrows depicting the data flow from one step to another.