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A couple things for manually laying out ER diagrams

[This topic is migrated from our old forums. The original author name has been removed]

DbVisualizer is by [i]far[/i] the best thing I've found for reverse engineering a database into an ER diagram. So thanks for that! Unfortunately, it has a few things missing that keep it from being my perfect piece of software. 1. I want the ability to take the automatically placed tables and move them around. I can sort of do this with the personal version and saving layouts, but even the personal version throws away my manual positioning if I reload the tables to pick up schema changes. (Unless I'm missing something?) I really need the ability to pick up schema changes without throwing away my hand-tweaked layout. 2. Even on the personal version, I still have a yFiles watermark on every page. 3. There doesn't seem to be a way to say "align the selected tables to their left/top/bottom/right side." 4. There doesn't seem to be a way to stop displaying field limits. For instance, my postgres "text" column types are showing up as "text(2147482647)". While that may be technically correct and consistent with other types, it's also a waste of space. I'd be happy with it just showing up as "text", even if that means all my existing "char(30)" fields will now show up as simply "char" to keep things consistent. 5. Speaking of using up space, it would be great if the columns had the choice of including default values and their foreign key actions (e.g. on delete cascade/set blah/etc). 6. Finally, for those of us with black and white printers, it might be nice if the primary key could be denoted by something other than yellow keys. Other than these things those, DbVisualizer seems like a great ER diagram generator!

[This reply is migrated from our old forums.]

Re: A couple things for manually laying out ER diagrams
Hi, > DbVisualizer is by [i]far[/i] the best thing I've found for reverse engineering a database into an ER diagram. So thanks for that! Unfortunately, it has a few things missing that keep it from being my perfect piece of software. > > 1. I want the ability to take the automatically placed tables and move them around. I can sort of do this with the personal version and saving layouts, but even the personal version throws away my manual positioning if I reload the tables to pick up schema changes. (Unless I'm missing something?) I really need the ability to pick up schema changes without throwing away my hand-tweaked layout. Currently you need to reload your changes each time. > 2. Even on the personal version, I still have a yFiles watermark on every page. Yes. > 3. There doesn't seem to be a way to say "align the selected tables to their left/top/bottom/right side." No, I'll add this as a feature request. > 4. There doesn't seem to be a way to stop displaying field limits. For instance, my postgres "text" column types are showing up as "text(2147482647)". While that may be technically correct and consistent with other types, it's also a waste of space. I'd be happy with it just showing up as "text", even if that means all my existing "char(30)" fields will now show up as simply "char" to keep things consistent. I agree on this. I will add this as well. > 5. Speaking of using up space, it would be great if the columns had the choice of including default values and their foreign key actions (e.g. on delete cascade/set blah/etc). Another addition to the future list :-) > 6. Finally, for those of us with black and white printers, it might be nice if the primary key could be denoted by something other than yellow keys. Doesn't it show at all? > Other than these things those, DbVisualizer seems like a great ER diagram generator! Thanks! Best Regards Roger
[This reply is migrated from our old forums. The original author name has been removed]

Re: A couple things for manually laying out ER diagrams
> {quote:title=Roger Bjärevall wrote:}{quote} > > > 1. I want the ability to take the automatically placed tables and move them around. I can sort of do this with the personal version and saving layouts, but even the personal version throws away my manual positioning if I reload the tables to pick up schema changes. (Unless I'm missing something?) I really need the ability to pick up schema changes without throwing away my hand-tweaked layout. > > Currently you need to reload your changes each time. Right, but my point is, if I reload the database, I loose my customized layout. If I reload my customized layout, I loose any updates to the schema. Surely I'm not the only one that would find it useful to not loose my customized layout when I refresh the schema? I understand if I added more columns to a table, it may no longer be layed out properly, and I'm ok with that. I would only use the auto-layout feature once anyway, when first importing the database. After that, my users expect tables to stay in roughly the same place between schema versions on their ER diagrams. Out of all my requests, this one has by far the biggest priority for me. > > 2. Even on the personal version, I still have a yFiles watermark on every page. > > Yes. Right. :) Is there any way to make that go away? Maybe by buying a more advanced version? :) > > 6. Finally, for those of us with black and white printers, it might be nice if the primary key could be denoted by something other than yellow keys. > > Doesn't it show at all? It shows up as a random collection of pixels that looks very unlike a key. A simple black key would solve this problem nicely.... Thanks for reading these!