Designing a Database with Microsoft Visio 2000

  • Comments posted to this topic are about the content posted at http://www.sqlservercentral.com/columnists/bszabo/visiodesign.asp


    Bruce Szabo, MCSE+I, MCDBA, MCSD

  • sorry, dude- I went through the entire article, then realized that I couldn't perform the most important step - which is "creating" the database. There is no "generate" option in my Visio2000 installation. I even reinstalled, but still no "generate". I'm not sure what to do now, I searched the help files, but found nothing.

  • I can't find the 'Generate Database Wizard' either. Running Visio 2000 SR1.

  • You poor folks must be with me and only have the professional edition where I believe Bruce has the Enterprise edition. See MS comments from overview of product;

    "Microsoft Visio® 2000 offers two editions created specifically for software and database developers. Visio 2000 Professional Edition provides drawing support for industry-standard notations, with tools to automatically document existing projects. And Visio 2000 Enterprise Edition gives you even more advanced modeling capabilities, including the ability to automatically generate database schema and source code."

    Looks great though and nice job Bruce!

    David

    David

    @SQLTentmaker

    “He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain that which he cannot lose” - Jim Elliot

  • I am sorry I always forget to mention the Enterprise Edition is the one this feature works with. Man, I wish MS would get it straight. Sorry about that, although if you were contemplating upgrading it is a great reason to upgrade. At the time I upgraded I was actually more interested in mapping network diagrams.

    Bruce

    Bruce Szabo, MCSE+I, MCDBA, MCSD


    Bruce Szabo, MCSE+I, MCDBA, MCSD

  • And what about Visio 2002 Enterprise Edition?

    Can we generate a database scheme from here?

    If not, can we move a vsd-file from Visio 2002 to 2000?

  • I read your article and couldn't help thinking why anyone would want to use Visio to model a database when you can do this within SQL itself?

  • I fall into that camp of "why use Visio" myself. Great tool, but so far I've found EM & diagrams to do a pretty good job. Open to discusson though:-)

    Andy

    http://www.sqlservercentral.com/columnists/awarren/

  • Well it seems as though I have hit on a topic for discussion.

    I looked at Microsoft's site and it does not seem as though they even carry a Visio Enterprise anymore. It seems as though they only have Vision Standard and Visio Professional.

    The brochure mentions you can Reverse Engineer databases with the product but it does not mention generating the databases. I will do some more research but I believe you can generate diagrams with Visio 2002.

    Bruce Szabo, MCSE+I, MCDBA, MCSD


    Bruce Szabo, MCSE+I, MCDBA, MCSD

  • To Andy's point I agree that SQL may have tools that can help you out. In my case though and I did not spell it out in the article but I took a FoxPro database, reverse engineered it and then output it in Access and then SQL. Visio worked great in this case with the only caveat being I had to be careful with data types.

    The other solution could have been to upsize to SQL and then try what you suggested although I am not familiar with those tools at all.

    Maybe that would be a good topic for another article. 🙂 Thanks for the feedback!

    Bruce Szabo, MCSE+I, MCDBA, MCSD


    Bruce Szabo, MCSE+I, MCDBA, MCSD

  • And how about support for refreshing the model? MS has not been able to get this feature to work. They have tried and unfortunately failed.

    Do you know how long it takes to recreate a model over and over again with reverse engineering.

    Maybe the Visio guys could walk over to the SQL Server building and get Visio 2000 EE SR1, Visio 2002 EE, Professional, VS.NET fixed.


    Tim Schwallie

  • I actually did have luck updating my models in Visio. It was before I had any data in it though which I could imagine would make a world of difference.

    Bruce Szabo, MCSE+I, MCDBA, MCSD


    Bruce Szabo, MCSE+I, MCDBA, MCSD

Viewing 12 posts - 1 through 11 (of 11 total)

You must be logged in to reply to this topic. Login to reply