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Viewing Entity Relationships

Use the References graph to see how tables are related to other tables through Foreign Keys.

You can view relations to/from one or more tables in different graph layouts: Hierarchical, Organic, Orthogonal, or Circular.Layout settings can be changed in the Graph Control area, which is shown or hidden with the settings toggle button in the toolbar. For instance, you can select how much information to include for each table in the graph: just the Table Name, the Primary Key column(s) or all Columns, which links to include, and whether or not to highlight links for selected tables. Settings vary slightly depending on whether you are viewing relations for a single table or multiple tables, and some settings (e.g. Links to Columns) are only available in Hierarchical layout.

If you choose the Hierarchical layout and select Links to Columns and Highlight Links, the graph will for all selected table nodes color code links and columns to indicate usage:

- foreign key columns and outbound links are green - primary key columns and inbound links are red - bidirectional columns (used for both inbound and outbound links) and bidirectional links (where both source and target tables are selected) are orange

The graph can be Exported to a file in JPG, GIF, PNG, SVG, PDF or EMF. It can also be saved s a GML (Graph Modeling Language) file that you can then open in the yEd tool from yWorks for further manipulation. The GML format is saved using Save As in the right-click menu. You can also control whether the table names should be qualified with the schema/catalog in the graph.

When opened on multiple tables, the graph shows all links between the tables; you cannot choose to show inbound or outbound relations since all links are both outbound (from one table) and inbound (to some other table). You can however exclude unreferenced tables and/or manually select which tables to include on the graph.

To zoom in on a specific table, you can also view table relationships for a specific table.

  1. Locate the Tables node in the Databases tab tree
  2. Open the Object View tab (right-click -> Open in Tab)
  3. Select the References sub tab

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Removing details and turning on highlighting to focus on certain aspects of the schema can be quite useful, especially if you choose to export the graph to discuss it with someone else.

Changing the layout, reducing the number of tables and suppressing some information makes it easier to focus on structure.

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Check Viewing Table Relationships section for information about the references graph showing references for a specific table.