Entity/Relationship Editor

The left-hand side of the editor relates to the chosen Entity or Relationship. The right-hand relates to the selected data component of the Entity or Relationship.

On the right-hand side of the editor for the component:

Component Name. The name of the component that you are creating or editing. When you have finished specifying the component, click on the Apply button and the new component appears on the left-hand side in the Definition of the Entity or Relationship.

Component Type.  Choose between Key Attribute, Attribute or Non attribute.If you specify the component as a key attribute then the component is marked by a # symbol in the definition. You can specify whether any refinements of key attributes are transformed by Data Base Designer or whether key attributes themselves are transformed. If you specify the component as an attribute then the component is marked by a @ symbol in the definition. You can specify whether any refinements of attributes are transformed by Data Base Designer or whether the attributes themselves are transformed. All components not preceded by a # or @ symbol are non attributes. Non attribute components that are not further refined (leaf components) are transformed by Data Base Designer unless you have specified that a key attribute or attribute higher up the data tree should be transformed instead.

Primitive. Specify whether the component is a primitive. If you click on this option the component will appear enclosed by quotes ("") in the usual text-based data editor. A status message indicates whether the component is refined.

Short comment.  Enter the short comment for the component. If you use the data editor to edit the data definition, you will see that the short comment has been added after the component name.The comment is transferred to a comment in the SQL script.

Apply or Reset. Click on Apply to change the definition of the component or Reset to set the fields back to their previous values.

Data Base Definitions. Click on this button to access the panel "Data Base Designer - Component Definitions", which contains the data base definitions for the component. The data base definitions enable you to specify parameters for the column definition in the SQL CREATE TABLE command. See Component Definitions.

Edit DD (for the component) Click on this button to open a new Entity/Relationship Editor to edit the data definition of the component.

On the left-hand side of the editor for the Entity or Relationship:

Definition.  The definition of the Entity or Relationship is represented as a list of data components. Such a list is equivalent to a sequence of attributes.All definitions that you create with the Entity/Relationship Editor are based on sequences of attributes because other types of definitions are not relevant for Data Base Designer.

Comment.  Enter the comment for the Entity or Relationship. If you use the data editor to edit the data definition, you will see that the comment has been added before the = symbol.The comment is transferred to a comment in the SQL script.

Data Base Definitions. Click on this button to access the panel "Data Base Designer - Component Definitions", which contains the data base definitions for the component. The data base definitions enable you to specify parameters for the SQL CREATE TABLE command. See Entities/Relationship Definitions.

View SQL. Click on this button to display the SQL commands resulting from this Entity or Relationship. A text editor opens containing the corresponding part of the script. You should run the Data Base Designer for a whole Entity-Relationship Diagram or Model before viewing new results because of the inheritance rules. Note that the SQL commands are only stored with the Entity or Relationship if you click on Store Results in Project Library when you run Data Base Designer.If you want to see the complete script, use the operating system commands to look at the script file. The name of the file is set when you run Data Base Designer. If you no longer know the name of the file you can read it from the Data Base Designer log file (usually dbdes.log).