I can sort of get this to work but it still seems like magic so I don’t think I’m doing this the right way and the questions I ask the world thus far don’t seem to get me quite where I want. Using other diagram tools for ERD, I am able to create a new ERD by copying entities from one diagram to another, which in turn copies the relationship where I choose so that I can generate a picture for my documentation of the model segments that represent different functional areas of the whole system. In some cases I have stumbled upon a question when editing the “sub-diagram” (don’t think thats what this this actually is but for lack of a better term) that suggests I might want to bubble up my changes to the original…and I do…but I cannot really seems to find a way to efficiently synchronize the “master” with this child diagram. Is this possible and if I’m not explaining it well, can someone tell me at least how to better describe what I’m trying to explain so I can continue searching ?
Thank you for your post. To provide you with a better solution, may I know you for some screenshots that illustrate your steps and problem? Look forward to hearing from you.
In VP you can use class diagram and “sync” that to ERD - ERD being relational generally.
If you simply want to pull thru new relationships youve added in other diagrams thats quite easy.
Via the right mouse button you can just select “show relationships”
Also you can assign entitities to domains directly
If you’re literally copying from diagram to diagram, rather than dragging from the model explorer take care as to whether you are create a “View” back to the original or creating a new entity.
Also if for example you were trying to show evolution of data model then you can “transit” your diagram to maintain traceability back, or just use visual diff to get side by side compare.
If you want to have them always appear automatically thats sometimes not a good idea and doesnt fit too well a notion of conceptual>logical>physical as your conceptual model would get too busy.
Some more - I noticed that if I have an entity on my ERD that doesnt have related entities shown, then if selected that initial entity had a little icon in its lower right hand side encouraging me to visualise related elements - so it hints there is more. None of this needs subdiagrams to work - two completely seperate diagrams can show different views of the same underlying entities for different purposes as you were aiming to do. Also if you wanted for example to have an informative table on the diagram showing other related entities - but not actually visualise them you can do that using the slightly badly named ETL table. Works quite well - you can build relatively complex selection criteria.
