As you can see below, the ABVвЂ™s ERDВ makes the complex relationships much more accessible to new users. Getting back to the ABV, as I drew the entity structures and their cardinalities I realizedВ I needed to add a few more transitive entities and normalize some of the relationships as I had a highly undesirable many-to-many relationship between my purchase table and items. This feature is not only practical but can also help with development. It also contains intuitive features such as converting lines that connect entities into cardinality notations with pulldown options to switch to the desired notation style. Adjust shapes by clicking on corners or select Metrics to adjust to specific size. The frequently updated UI adds user requested features and contains tutorials within the diagram menu. Most users can get by with just the basic options but for advanced users there are settings to adjust your page size and orientation, add layers, revision history, theme colors, adjust image size, and advanced text options. Using the program is akin to having access to PhotoshopвЂ™s powerful image manipulation tools but in a streamlined user-friendly UI. Manipulating shapes and adding text overlays is straightforward, you merely click the edge of the boxes of the shape you want and adjust the size of it, which can either be done manually or set to a specific pixel size. Once you have selected your templateВ it is easy to begin your drawing by dragging the desired shapes onto the canvas. This is especially helpful when creating high fidelity wireframes that require end product level of detail. While these shapes should be more than enough for standard diagrams, you are also free to mix and match shapes, such as using flowchart shapes for your wireframe diagram. Preselected shapes for a Blank Flowchart document The website starts off users with a few templates to modify from 16 categories, such as Flowchart and Entity Relationship (ERD), or you can opt for a blank canvas.В I prefer selecting the Blank (Name of Diagram) option as it clears the field of any unneeded shapes andВ preselects useful shapes. However, drawing these diagrams usually requires either expensive programs like Microsoft Visio (student rate $269) or underwhelming experiences of freeware.В Enter Lucidchart,В an easy to use and relatively inexpensive diagram solution. Which is a fair reaction since trying to describe the intricacies of abstract ideas such as entity relationship diagrams require clear-cut visuals. ME: Yeah unfortunately that means I need to add a few transitive propвЂ¦ I lost your attention after beer, didnвЂ™t I? ME: So remember my beer database? Well now it includes information on the brewery, style AND contains fictional store transactions At first it was easy to explain the contents: BEER! After incorporating more than one entity the explanation grew a bit murky: EditorвЂ™s note: This is a guest post by Marlon HernandezДЇor the past year, across four different classes and countless bars, I have worked on an idea thatВ is quickly becoming myВ go-to project for anyВ Master of Information Science assignment the Archivist Beer Vault (ABV) database.

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