RE: Doohickey to visually show relationships between files -- MIDRANGE-L

I don't remember whether MS Access' relationship diagram will look at RI constraints - some ERD products will reverse-engineer RI, so that relationships defined thusly will be shown automatically.

Of course, there'd better be a good reason to have the relationships, and to set up RI constraints in the first place. And then think of all the work you can do to take the integrity-guaranteeing code from your RPG code! Job security, if your boss agrees.

Vern

At 03:03 PM 6/30/2004, you wrote:

As others have mentioned, you're looking for a Entity Relationship
Diagramer. If you have it, Visio Pro will actually import schemas from
ODBC data sources, so you could import all your tables (files) and
columns (fields) into a visio document.

However, for the most part we (AS/400 programmers) have never entered
the relationships between files into the database. We all "know" that
the CustNo field on the order header is the link from order header to
customer, but we haven't told DB2/400 that. Therefore when you do the
import you won't have any relationships defined. You can however, then
add them in visio.

Also, if you have Visio for Enterprise Architects you can then generate
the DDL (SQL) code necessary to tell DB2/400 about the relationships, if
you want to.

-Walden


------------
Walden H Leverich III
President & CEO
Tech Software
(516) 627-3800 x11
WaldenL@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
http://www.TechSoftInc.com

Quiquid latine dictum sit altum viditur.
(Whatever is said in Latin seems profound.)

-----Original Message-----
From: midrange-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:midrange-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Dan Bale
Sent: Wednesday, June 30, 2004 9:39 AM
To: midrange-l@xxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: Doohickey to visually show relationships between files

Don't know what I'm really asking for so, if anything, someone interpret
what I'm asking and suggest some search terms for the archives or web
links.
<g>

I'm in the process of doing some analysis for an application I need to
write.  The files that this application needs to use are many and
somehow
interrelated, but it's difficult to mentally keep track of them all.
Part
of the problem for me may be that some of the files are not normalized
very
well.

So I guess I'm looking for a tool that allows me to plug in file names
which, in turn, lists fields defined, and perhaps "click & drag"
connectors
that show relationships as I discover them.

Does any of this make sense?

FWIW, we're on v5r2 and using Win2k, CAE, WDSC.

TIA, db
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