How to Draw ER Diagrams

An Entity Relationship (ER) Diagram is a type of flowchart that illustrates the logical structure of databases, how the different entities, such as people, objects or concepts relate to each other within a given system. How to draw ER Diagrams fast and easy? ConceptDraw DIAGRAM diagramming and vector drawing software enhanced with Entity-Relationship Diagram (ERD) solution from Software Development area of ConceptDraw Solution Park offers you the powerful abilities of designing the ER Diagrams and ERD drawings without efforts. This solution includes a lot of predesigned icons advocated by popular Chen's and Crow’s Foot notations, which can be used when describing an enterprise database and depicting it by abstract way. Simply drag the required objects to ConceptDraw document, connect them in a desired way and make style settings. But the easiest and fastest way of drawing ERDs is to make them on the base of ready-to-use Chen ERD and Crow's Foot ERD templates, which are both represented at ConceptDraw STORE.

ConceptDraw DIAGRAM ER Diagram Tool

Entity-relationship model, also called ER-model, is the main tool of domain modeling on the stage of conceptual design. The modeling of domain data structures is based on the use of graphical tools - Entity-Relationship diagrams (ER-diagrams). The core concepts of ER-Diagram are entity, attribute and relationship. ER-diagram lets visually represent the entities, helps effectively document all properties of designed system and to detail the data storages. To represent the elements at ER-model are commonly used Chen’s notation and Crow’s foot notation, each has its pros and cons. The entity on ER-diagram is represented in the form of rectangle, which specifies its name. An attribute is a property of the entity and relationship is an interaction between the entities. The relationship between two entities is called binary, between more than two entities - ternary. Specific software, such as ConceptDraw DIAGRAM with Entity-Relationship Diagram (ERD) solution from ConceptDraw Solution Park is helpful for easy creation Entity-Relationship Diagrams.

Entity-Relationship Diagram (ERD) with ConceptDraw DIAGRAM

Entity-Relationship Diagram (ERD) is applied for detailed description of structures and high-level (conceptual) design databases using the Chen's and Crow's Foot notations. An ERD represents a diagram constructed mainly of rectangular blocks (for entities, data) linked with relationships. The links between the blocks are used to describe relations between the entities. There are three types of relationships: one-to-one, one-to-many, and many-to-many. Use the specialized ERD software - ConceptDraw DIAGRAM to create the Entity-Relationship Diagrams (ERDs) of any degree of complexity with Chen's and Crow's Foot notations. Draw them easily applying the powerful built-in tools and libraries of predesigned ERD vector objects from Entity-Relationship Diagram (ERD) solution from the Software Development area of ConceptDraw Solution Park. You can also start with one of ready template or sample included to this solution. Designing the ERDs in ConceptDraw DIAGRAM you can easy move the objects within a diagram with saving the relationships between them.

Components of ER Diagram

Entity-Relationship model gives the possibility to visually describe a database using the components of ER Diagram, entity relationship stencils, relationship symbols, work flow shapes. ER-diagram lets represent the data or entities, attributes of these entities and relationships between them, using standardized Crow’s Foot notation icons or Chen’s notation icons. An entity is an object of the real world, it can exist independently and has the instances which differ in attribute values (properties). The attributes give an unambiguous (uniquely) identification for the instance and are called the primary key, this key can be composite and combine several attributes. ConceptDraw DIAGRAM is a professional software available with Entity-Relationship Diagram (ERD) solution from Software Development area that lets create ERDs for various database systems, using Crow’s Foot and Chen’s notations. It is invaluable tool for software engineers and developers, it supports ODBC-compatible databases (Oracle, MySQL, MS Access, MS SQL, InterBase, Firebird and others).

Entity Relationship Diagram Software

The world-best Entity Relationship Diagram software suitable for professional ERD drawing is ConceptDraw DIAGRAM software extended with the Entity-Relationship Diagram (ERD) solution. This solution contains all libraries, templates and samples you may need for professional ERD drawing.

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 DIAGRAM 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.

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 DIAGRAM software.

ER Diagram Styles

When creating ER diagrams, you can apply different color ER diagram styles and also notation styles. ConceptDraw DIAGRAM enhanced with Entity-Relationship Diagram (ERD) Solution gives the ability to draw visual and attractive ER Diagrams using the style icons from Crow’s Foot notation and Chen's notation professionally designed and offered by ERD Chen's Notation and ERD Crow’s Foot Notation libraries.

ER diagram tool for OS X

ER diagram is the most popular database design tool which lets create graphical representations of database tables, their columns and also relationships. As for the Mac users, they are very interested in powerful database diagramming tools and ER diagram tool for OS X to design professional looking E-R Diagrams and ERD drawings. ConceptDraw DIAGRAM software on Mac OS X gives the ability to easy draw ERDs.

Entity Relationship Diagram Software Engineering

Entity Relationship Diagram (aka ER Diagram, E-R Diagram, ERD) is a time-tested and widespread software development and software engineering method for data modeling, illustrating the logical structure of databases and system design. For ERDs construction are used three basic elements: entities, attributes, and relationships. Chen's notation for ERD supposes the use of rectangles (boxes) to represent entities and diamonds to depict relationships between first-class objects. This notation is popular when creating conceptual data models of information systems. Another standardized notation for ER diagrams is Crow's foot notation. ConceptDraw DIAGRAM as a powerful Entity Relationship Diagram software engineering provides the tools of Entity-Relationship Diagram (ERD) solution from Software Development area of ConceptDraw Solution Park for instantly describing databases using ERDs of Crow’s Foot and Chen’s notations. Use the predesigned vector elements for both these notations from 2 libraries included to Entity-Relationship Diagram (ERD) solution.