Managing / Editing Large Diagrams

Feature Suggestions
1

I have a very large data model with over 200 tables and 4000 columns. Managing a data model of this size in dbdiagrams is difficult at best. I have two possible suggestions that could help this. This is not either or as having both would be great.

  1. Allow hiding of tables / Table groups. If I am working on a model and focusing on one area, to remove clutter form the diagram it would be nice to have it hide table/table group I am not working on at that moment.
  2. Allow breaking a large model into several different diagrams. Then allowing to connect them together for FK references or the like. This allows the management of different models/schemas while still allowing to reference them from within a diagram. This could be done in several ways, some kind of “Include” or “External Reference” in the script so that when you create a FK it will know to validate in all included models. This would also need to be recognized by Publish to dbdocs and have the option of including ALL referenced models in one document.

Anyone else have any thoughts on this?

Regards,

Steven

2

Hi Steven,

Thank you for your feature suggestions.
I am Huy from the dbdiagram team.

I’d like to learn more about your situation.

  1. In the first case, what do you think if the user could add more than one tag to each table? The user can then filter the tables based on the tags you’ve chosen. The screen will only display tables related to the filtered tags.

  2. According to my understanding, you want to add the ability to split DBML into smaller files that can be joined using the ‘import’ syntax in the second case.

I look forward to hearing from you.

Best regards,
David

3

Thank you, Huy for your quick response.

  1. That would work as well. I still think that hiding based on Table Group is also a good option. Maybe another “TableGroup” like feature. Defined like a Table Group but would not have any impact on the diagram, no box or header. You can take actions on these “Groups”, in this case, hide/show.

  2. Yes. Manage them separately but be able to create relationships between the diagrams. And also be able to view them “All Together”.

Regards,

Steven

4

Hi Steven,

Thank you for the updates.

We took into account every detail you provided. We have some ideas that are similar to your suggestions, and we will consider the features in the future.

Feel free to contact us when you have more concerns or questions.

Best regards,
David