Tokyo-B Posted January 1, 2002 Share Posted January 1, 2002 Does anyone know of a good tool for creating ERD's (Entity Relationship Diagrams) for FMP db's? I would prefer it to be on Win, bit MAC is OK as long as I can have a tool to do this. Visio can do it for SQL, I believe, and Access has this feature built in. Appreciated. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
d94dsj Posted January 4, 2002 Share Posted January 4, 2002 Waves In Motion has a Mac-only tool called "Visualizer 1.0", which can create ER-diagrams from existing FMP databases. I haven't tested the software myself, but judging from the screenshots (www.wmotion.com/visualizer) it looks sufficient only for small projects (maybe < 10-15 related files). I don't know how much you can "tailor" the ER "bubbles" either. One thing that makes it so hard to write a program that create ER-diagrams from existing FMP databases is that relationships in FileMaker is not the same as relationships in Relational Database Theory (or "joins" in SQL). A FileMaker "relationsship" can be used for many other purposes than just maintaining connections and referential integrity between files. For example, self-joins for display purposes, constant relationships for data transfer, and there are many more uses for a FileMaker "relationship". So, how would the program know what is supposed to be "real" relationships, and which are not (there is no automated way of doing this). In a traditional ER-diagram, you might use "Crow's feet" to indicate the multiplicity of a relationship (e.g. one-to-many, one-to-one, zero-to-many,...) and write other business rules that apply to them. I've used Visio 2000 for creating ER-diagrams, and although you can get quite good results in the end, it takes a loooong time to create them, and to keep them updated, since you cannot get it to interact with FMP. If someone finds a software that is better, please let me know! Good luck! /Daniel Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Steven H. Blackwell Posted January 4, 2002 Share Posted January 4, 2002 Visualizer works well even with larger file sets. I have used it on a 45 file solution. Check them out at http://www.wmotion.com Old Advance Man Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tokyo-B Posted January 4, 2002 Author Share Posted January 4, 2002 Thanks, I did find Waves in Motion and will take a look at Visualizer. Inspiration is cross platform and good for laying out flow idea. I also use Visio 2002, but Inspiration is easy to draft up quickly. Cheers, Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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