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This page is for data modellers or application designers. It explains how to use a relationship diagram to understand how your system's data is connected.

Overview

Use a relationship diagram to represent the information that your application will use and how it is connected. It is important to understand the connections between data when you start to create relational views, which display data from different streams.

Relationship diagrams do not show changes over time, responsibilities or processes. To represent this type of information, use a Workflow Diagram.

PhixFlow's relationship diagrams are simplified entity-relationship diagrams (ERD).  An ERD is commonly used to show the relationships between database tables. If you are not familiar with ERDs for databases, the concepts are explained in this article: ER Diagram Tutorial in DBMS.  

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Key conceptsEntity-Relationship DiagramPhixFlow Relationship DiagramExamplesA database table represents a thing or entity.

A stream represents a thing or entity.

Tip

Choose a stream name that reflects the entity it represents.

Entities:

  • Company
  • Employee
  • Department
  • Product
The column headers of a database table are the data attributes.

The stream attributes are the data attributes.

Employee attributes:

  • EmployeeID 
  • Name
  • Address
  • Phone
  • Department

A stream must include at least one attribute that has unique values.
This is usually an identifier, so has ID or UID in the name.
The unique attribute is the primary key.

Primary Keys

  • Employee stream: EmployeeID
  • Department stream: DepartmentID
When the data from one stream's primary key also appears in a different stream, it is a foreign key.

Employee attributes:

  • EmployeeID (primary key)
  • Name
  • Address
  • Phone
  • Department = DepartmentID - foreign key

Department attributes

  • DepartmentID - primary key
  • Department Name
  • Purpose
  • Department Manager = foreign key

Tables or attributes can have various relationships to each other

Tip

By convention, a relationship is expressed as an action (verb) that follows the left-right flow of the diagram.

Attributes can have relationships. On the diagram the relationship is shown as an arrow.
The relationship must have a unique name.

Relationships can only be one-to-many, from primary key to foreign key.

Relationships

  • one company → employs → many employee
  • one employee → manages → several departments
  • one department → makes → many products
Note

We recommend that a primary key attribute should be an integer, because PhixFlow can automatically generate a unique integer value for each new data record.

More About Relationships

The name for the relationship should reflect its direction. For example:

  • either company → employs → people
  • or people→ work for → company
  • but not company → work for → people

PhixFlow imposes no restrictions on the names for relationships, but it must be unique in the repository.

One to One Relationships

In a PhixFlow relationship diagram, it is not possible to create a one-to-one relationship. 

Many-to-Many Relationships

You can show a many-to-many relationship by using an intermediate stream. This stream has attributes that are foreign keys from the two streams you want to connect, with a one-to-many relationship into the foreign keys. For example

  • A customer buys many products
  • And a product can be bought by many customers
  • The intermediate stream is a Customer Purchase Record, which has both the CustomerID and ProductID as foreign keys.

Example

In a relationship diagram, a stream and its attributes are displayed as a box. You can expand or collapse the  box using the icon in the top left. PhixFlow shows all the attributes when the stream is expanded, and only the primary and foreign keys when it is collapsed.

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The following diagram shows some relationships between streams that represent a company, its employees and departments, the products it makes and the customers who buy them.

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The company "contains" many departments. An employee "works in" a department, and a department can have many team members. In this company, the department "makes" several products, which "ship to" many customers.

Relationship diagrams are useful because you can design relational views that use data from multiple streams. For example, you might want a view that shows the employee details by department. This will display data from the Employee stream and the Department stream. The relationship diagram shows these are connected by the DepartmentID attribute.

Relationship Diagrams and Relational Views

Relationship diagrams underpin the ability to create views that combine data from different streams. 

When you create a GUI screen for an application,an area can contain information from a stream, displayed as a Stream View. This can be a grid (table), a graph or a chart. PhixFlow can show data from different streams, where the streams have a connection in a relationship diagram. 

Drawing Relationship Diagrams

Create a Relationship Diagram

In the repository for your application, right-click on  Insert excerpt_relationship_diagram_relationship_diagramnopaneltrue.Click  Insert excerpt_add_addnopaneltrue.
  • In the pop-up, enter its name.
  • PhixFlow opens a properties tab on the right, and a new relationship diagram on the left. The relationship diagram has a toolbar at the top; see the Toolbar section below for details.
    • TipWhen you make any changes to the diagram, remember to  Insert excerpt_save_savenopaneltrue.

    Open a Relationship Diagram

    To open an existing relationship diagram:

  • either, in the repository, right-click on its name and select Display.
    • or, in the properties toolbar, click the . Insert excerpt_relationship_diagram_relationship_diagramnopaneltrue icon.

    Create a New Stream

    Drag the  Insert excerpt_streams_add_streams_addnopaneltrue icon from the toolbar into the diagram.In the pop-up, enter its name, for example "Customer" and click Insert excerpt_dialog_finish_dialog_finishnopaneltrue. PhixFlow opens a new Stream properties tab.
  • PhixFlow adds a box to represent the data stream, and opens the properties tab for it.
    • To add attributes to the streameither, in the properties tab on the right, In the Attributes section, click  Insert excerpt_add_addnopaneltrue.
  • or right-click the stream and select Add New Stream Attribute.
  • PhixFlow opens a Stream Attributes properties tab where you can specify details for the attribute, such as its name, data type and length. 
  • If this is the unique identifier, tick Primary Key. Remember to include ID or UID in the name.

    • Add an Existing Stream

    1. In the repository, open the list of streams.
    2. Drag a stream from the repository into the diagram. PhixFlow adds the stream with a list of all of its attributes.
    3. If the stream has many attributes, click Image Removed to collapse the stream so that it only shows the primary and foreign keys.

    Connect Attributes

    To connect attributes in different streams, click-drag from one attribute to another. PhixFlow shows the currently selected destination in bold. Release the click to connect to the selected destination.

    PhixFlow can only connect primary and foreign keys. If you connect standard attributes, PhixFlow automatically sets them to be foreign keys.

    Tip

    You can change which attributes are the Primary Key or a Foreign Key  using the tick boxes in the the Stream Attributes properties.

    PhixFlow automatically sets the type of relationship according to the keys:

    • one to one: from primary key to primary key
    • one to many: from primary key to foreign key
    • many to one: from foreign key to primary key
    • many to many: from foreign key to foreign key.

    Properties

    Insert excerpt_standard_settings_standard_settingsnopaneltrue

    Basic Settings

    FieldDescriptionNameEnter the name for the entity-relationship diagram. When yo press Return or save a new properties tab, PhixFlow opens an empty diagram in the workspace on the left.Toolbar  Anchortoolbartoolbar

    Image Removed

    Insert excerpt_zoom_out_zoom_outnopaneltrueZoom out to see more of the diagram, with smaller text. Insert excerpt_zoom_in_zoom_innopaneltrueZoom in to see a smaller area of the diagram, with larger text. Insert excerpt_align_grid_align_gridnopaneltrue

    Organise selected objects in a grid.

    Insert excerpt_align_left_align_leftnopaneltrue

    Align all selected objects left.

    Insert excerpt_align_right_align_rightnopaneltrue

    Align all selected objects right.

    Insert excerpt_align_top_align_topnopaneltrue

    Align all selected objects to top.

    Insert excerpt_align_bottom_align_bottomnopaneltrue

    Align all selected objects to bottom.

    Insert excerpt_stream_add_stream_addnopaneltrueEither drag into the diagram to add a stream
    or click to open the list of streams in the repository and drag a stream in from the repository list. Insert excerpt_save_savenopaneltrueSave the relationship diagram. Insert excerpt_refresh_refreshnopaneltrueRefresh the diagram, for example to show changes to an attributes Primary Key or Foreign Key properties. Insert excerpt_help_helpnopaneltrueOpens this help page for relationship diagrams.

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    Overview

    PhixFlow ERDs define the logical structure of the data in your application. 

    The following example shows an ERD for a school. A school has entities, for example: departments, teachers, students, classrooms and so on. All these entities are represented as tables. The lines connecting the tables show the relationships between them.


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    The following illustration shows how an ERD represents a table.

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    The table has a list of attributes, which represent the different pieces of data you want to record.

    Attributes are configured with a data type and associated properties; see Understanding Data Types. For example the Address attribute is a String which has an associated length. To change the attribute to reflect the nature of your data, click on the attribute's name to open and edit its properties.

    It is important to set the correct data type and properties before loading records into a table, as you cannot change the data type once the table contains records. If you do have data and want to change the type you will need to add a new attribute or clear your data; see Clearing and Loading Data in an ERD.

    You can create tables in an ERD manually, but if you already have data, PhixFlow can automatically create tables from it; see Adding Content to an ERD.

    Primary Keys and UIDs

    PhixFlow expects every table to have a special attribute called a primary key, which uniquely identifies each record. For example, teachers have a UID as the primary key. This is because they can have the same first or family name, or even both, so these attributes cannot be a primary key. When you create a table, PhixFlow adds an attribute called UID (short for Unique IDentifier) and configures it as follows:

    • as the table's Image Added primary key.
    • as an integer.
    • to automatically create a unique number for every record in a table.

    This means PhixFlow can ensure all the UIDs have unique values. 

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    Display Name 
    Anchor
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    Typically a primary key is not user-friendly and you do not want to display it. Instead, you want to display something that makes more sense to a person. For this reason, when you create a table, PhixFlow automatically adds an attribute called Name and ticks its Display Name property. The display name is shown in place of the primary key when displayed on a view or screen. Display names do not need to be unique and should be something user-friendly.

    Let's look at the following example. For the SchoolDept table, PhixFlow has created:

    • a UID, for example 1490.
    • a Name, for example Mathematics.

    When any view makes reference to the SchoolDept using it's primary key, PhixFlow displays the department name, not its number; see Using Relational Views. The configuration is shown below:

        SchoolDept                         SchoolDept 
        Primary Key                        Display Name 

     Image Added        Image Added

    Relationships and Foreign Keys 
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    Tables in PhixFlow are relational, which means information in one table can be related to information in another table. The key benefit is you can access data in many different tables without needing to duplicate it.

    A foreign key is an attribute in one table, that refers to the primary key in another table.

    In an ERD you can connect tables by drawing a line, called a relationship between them. For example, the Teacher table needs to have the name of a department. The ERD below shows this relationship using a line that joins SchoolDept.DeptID to Teacher.Department.

    Image Added

    When you create screens that show data, PhixFlow uses the relationships defined in the ERD to provide options for displaying data from related attributes in the same grid, form, card, graph or chart; see Displaying Data (Views). This means you only need to store the School DeptID against a teacher to be able to access all of the SchoolDept details.

    When you create a relationship from a primary key to an attribute, PhixFlow automatically sets the attribute to be a Image Addedforeign key. Foreign keys must have the same data type and properties as the corresponding primary key. For example, in the illustration above, the Teacher.Department attribute contains the same data type as SchoolDept.DeptID; see Understanding Data Types.

    The foreign key represents the many side and the primary key the one side. This means that SchoolDept.DeptID is unique, there is only one record containing this unique information. The Teacher.Department, can have one or more instances of a value of DeptID. For example, the Maths Department UID could occur 10 times, once for each of the 10 maths teachers.

    One-to-many and Many-to-one

    PhixFlow draws a relationship line between a primary key and a foreign key. This represents a one-to-many relationship. For example, one teacher runs many courses.  A many-to-one relationship is implied when you read a relationship in the opposite direction. For example, a department has many teachers, and several teachers work for one department.

    Many:many 

    To create a many-to-many relationship, you need an intermediate table that has foreign key attributes from each of the tables you want to have a relationship. For example, many students take many courses. A many-to-many relationship is shown below, using the intermediate table called CourseAttendee. Notice that CourseAttendee does not need a unique identifier.

    Image Added

    • A course is attended by many students
    • A student takes many courses.

    Viewing ERD Data 
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     See Creating Dashboards and Reports.

    Using ERDs in Views

    PhixFlow displays data to application users via views most commonly a grid view, which displays data in rows and columns. 

    More Information