This page is for application designers who need to configure the relationships between data. It explains the properties for entity relationship diagram (ERD).

Overview

PhixFlow ERDs define the logical structure of the data in your application; see Entity Relationship Diagrams.

Property Pane Toolbar

For information about the toolbar options, see the Common Properties page, Toolbars and Controls section.

Properties Tab

Parent Details

If this item is within or belongs to another, its parent name is shown here. See the Parent Details section on the Common Properties page for more details.

Tables

For complete details on tables and ERDs see Entity Relationship Diagrams. The following diagram illustrates how an ERD represents a table:

Name	Description
Primary key	PhixFlow expects every table to have a special attribute called a primary key, which uniquely identifies each record.
Foreign Key	A foreign key attribute is an attribute in the table that refers to the primary key in another table. When you create a relationship from a primary key to an attribute, PhixFlow automatically sets the attribute to be a foreign key.
Display Name	The display name is the attribute that will be displayed in place of the Primary Key. 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 example a Company Name rather than their ID.

Basic Settings

Field	Description
Name	The name for the ERD.

Description

We recommend that you always enter a description to explain the purpose of this item.

Audit Tab

Audit Summary

See the Common Properties page, Audit Summary section.

Toolbars and Popup Menus

ERD Toolbar

The toolbar is at the top of the canvas. Hover your mouse pointer over the toolbar to see a tooltip.

Option	Description
Table	To create a new table, drag the icon from the toolbar onto the canvas. To add an existing table, click to list the tables available in the repository. Drag a table from the list into the ERD canvas.
Screen	Create a new application screen using data from the selected table. In the Create Screen window: Name: Enter a name for the screen Open Maximised: Tick for a maximised screen. Untick for a popup screen. Description: Optionally enter a description for the screen. Select a Template: PhixFlow shows the screen designs available to your application. These depend on the template packages/palettes you have. See Understanding Template Packages and Changing or Creating a Palette.
Canvas options
Help	Open the help topic with details about working with ERDs.
Arrange Selected Items	Options to arrange the selected components: Align Objects to Left: Align the left edges of all the selected components to the component that is furthest to the left. Align Objects to Right: Align the right edges of all the selected components to the component that is furthest to the right. Align Objects to Top: Align the top edges of the selected components to the component that is positioned highest. Align to base: Align the bottom edges of the selected components to the component that is positioned lowest. Distribute Objects Horizontally: Equally distribute the selected components horizontally in the available space. Distribute Objects Vertically: Equally distribute the selected components vertically in the available space.
Properties	Open the properties tab for the ERD.
Zoom Out	Zoom out to see more of the diagram, with smaller text.
Zoom In	Zoom in to see a smaller area of the diagram, with larger text.
Refresh	Update the ERD to the last saved diagram layout. This clears any unsaved layout changes. Your ERD should automatically show an changes elsewhere in PhixFlow. For example, if someone adds a new attribute to a table in your ERD, the attribute will appear on the list. If changes are not appearing, click this icon.

Table Popup Menu

To access more options in a popup menu, in the table header, click More Options

Option	Description
Edit	Open the properties for this table to make changes.
Remove	Remove the selected item(s) from the diagram.
Show many-to-one relations	Tables may have relationships to other tables not represented on the current ERD. Use these options to add all related tables to your ERD so that you can see the full relationship set; see Adding Content to an ERD, above.
Show one-to-many relations
Delete	Delete the selected item(s) from the ERD and from everywhere it is used.
Show or Hide Attributes	Toggle the tables between expanded to show all attributes or collapsed to show only the table name, primary key and any foreign keys. This is useful if your table contains many attributes.
Screen	Create a new application screen using data from the selected table.

Attribute Popup Menu

Option	Description
Make/Unset Primary Key	Make: set the current attribute to be a primary key. A table can have only one primary key. Unset: unset this attribute so it is no longer the primary key for the table.
Make/Unset Foreign Key	Make: set an attribute to be a foreign key. Unset: unset this attribute so it is no longer a foreign key.
Unset/Make Display Name	Make: set an attribute to be the display name for the primary key Unset: unset this attribute so it is no longer the display name for the primary key.
Add Attribute	Create a new attribute for the table. PhixFlow opens the properties where you can add a name and set the data type.
Delete Attribute	Delete the attribute from the table. PhixFlow prompts you to confirm.

Sections on this page

Learn More

For links to all pages in this topic, see Entity Relationship Diagrams.

Terminology changes in progress

As part of the redesign of PhixFlow, we are changing the following terms:

dashboard → screen
stream → table
stream attributes → attributes
stream item → record
stream set → recordset
stream view → view
stream item action → record-action
stream action → table-action
driver class → database driver

ERD