Entity Relationship Diagrams

ERD Fundamentals

ERD Page Layout

Here is a simplified view of the ERD editor:

1. The Toolbar provides ERD specific options, such as displaying the available tables that can be added to your ERD and creating a new screen for your data.
2. The Repository browser, can list all of the available tables in your application and any associated packages. Click Tables from the toolbar to display all available tables in this area. 
3. The Canvas area is where the ERD is configured. Tables can be added by:
   1. Dragging a Table from the toolbar onto the canvas. This creates a new table.
   2. Clicking Tables from the toolbar and dragging a table from the repository onto the canvas. Adds an existing table.
   3. Excel and CSV documents can be dragged directly onto the canvas and will be imported automatically, which creates a new table.
4. The Tables and Relationships, are displayed on the canvas.
   1. A Table shows all of the attributes it contains and their data type.
   2. A Relationship between two tables is displayed as a line connecting the primary key of one table to a foreign key of a second table. This is discussed in more detail in Relationship.

Overview

PhixFlow Entity Relationship Diagrams (ERDs) define the logical structure of the data in your application. "Entities" represent the things in the world that you want to represent as data.

The following example shows an ERD for a school. Here the school has entities: departments, teachers, students, classrooms and so on. All these entities are represented as tables and the lines connecting them show their relationships to one another. We can see from this a School Department has many Class Rooms and Teachers. This example is covered in detail in Understanding ERDs.

Create an ERD

1. Click the ERD link on your application's home page.
2. This lists all existing ERD diagrams and provides an Add button for creating new ERDs.

Open Existing ERD

1. Click the ERD link on your application's home page.
2. This lists all existing ERD diagrams.
3. Double click any item to open it.

Already Have Data?

If you have data that you wish to import into PhixFlow, such as a database or csv, you will need to use an Analysis Model to import it. See Importing Data and Importing Data Through an API for more detail.

Analysis Models will allow you to configure connectors to access your existing data sources and store the data as tables in PhixFlow's own database. You can also set up bulk processes to manipulate large volumes of data before it is presented to your users; see Analysis Models for Batch Processing Data.

What Next?

Understanding ERDs covers ERDs in more depth to help you design your own ERDs and views to display your data.