Visio Database Plug-in/Template

Question

Hi,

This might be a shot in the dark, but is there by any chance a way one can map (Oracle) database objects to .NET classes (preferably c#) for use with Visio? I am working on a project where I have to load database information into visio and allow users (without authentication) edit, create or delete this information. I already know how to get objects from the database and use them within the ASP .NET framework, but I do not know how to "convert" them into Visio elements (the type of elements one works with while using Visio for drawing diagrams and such). My programming language is c#, so I would prefer answers that imply the use of this language. Thank you!

Answer 1

In Visio Professional (and with 2010, also in Premium), there are two separate solutions for doing Database schema diagrams and UML model diagrams.  However, they are not able to work together in the way that you describe.  If you want to create a comprehensive Database diagram using the Reverse Engineering capability of the "Database Model Diagram", you could possibly create your own shapes to represent the classes and essentially annotate the schema diagram.  But this would not be easy, and neither the DB model solution or the UML model solution have public APIs, so you can't automate either one.

There are likely other modeling tools that will get you much closer than Visio will out of the box.  Just by searching on "Model database and C# classes", I found several sites that you can scan for more information :http://www.bing.com/search?q=model+database+and+C%23+classes&form=QBRE&qs=n&sk=

If you really want to have a go at creating your own solution, I suggest you start with the Visio SDK.  For Visio 2010, the SDK can be viewed / download starting from here :http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff758690.aspx

---

Barb

Answer 2

The short answer is "only if you write it". The modeling tools are closed objects with no published api's so they aren't accessible via user code. They use the microsoft odbc drivers to get to the database information, which in the past have shown some sensitivities to what Oracle was then doing with their products. MS's development community is going toward the entity model, and so are the tools. There are third parties that have written SQL add-ins.

al

Answer 3

Hello again, and thank you for your reply.

I am sorry I have not been able to get back to this thread for so long. I think I might have been unclear in my previous post. What I am really looking for is a way to replicate the Visio DB Modelling behaviour as far as loading the DB information into Visio (eg. including DB schemas, tables and single entries, and their relationships), and making changes to this model by using regular Visio modelling tools. Then after the user is finished with making changes to the database, this plug-in should be able to save these changes and impose them on the database. I was thinking perhaps a script could be generated using the information gathered from this session, or maybe a string with SQL commands representing these changes could be fed to the database through the OracleConnection object? Any thoughts on this would be greatly appreciated!