can a visio diagram be created from an external file?

[Adam Sandler]

Hello,

Using verion 2003 here. I'm NOTlooking for instructions on how to
foward or reverse engineer a database in Visio.

My question is guess is related to some type of scripting... From my
database's command line interface, if I describe a table, and save the
contents to a file, can I then suck that file up into visio and have it
model the attributes for me? Instead of clicking on the entity shape
from the palette and then typing out all the attributes and such.

Thanks!

 

[John Marshall, MVP]

If you can save the information in a text format it is possible to read the
file and create a diagram. Some logic will be required to place the shapes.

If you are talking about the UML solution, this may be a bit trickier. The
UML solution was created outside of Visio and unlike Visio, is a black box
and is not as easy to interrogate and change.

What databae are you using?

John... Visio MVP

Need stencils or ideas? http://visio.mvps.org/3rdparty.htm
Need VBA examples? http://visio.mvps.org/VBA.htm
Visio Wishlist http://visio.mvps.org/wish_list.htm

 

[Adam Sandler]

If you can save the information in a text format it is possible to read the
file and create a diagram. Some logic will be required to place the shapes.

Great, I think we're on the same page. Searching Google and this
newsgroup always leads me to forward engineering or reverse engineering
through the Database menu from within the app. I want to do this
externally from a text file of command line output. Suggestions are
greatly appreciated.

If you are talking about the UML solution, this may be a bit trickier. The
UML solution was created outside of Visio and unlike Visio, is a black box
and is not as easy to interrogate and change.

Not looking for UML at all... just a regular ol DB model with entities
and attributes.

What databae are you using?

Oracle... yes I know that one can reverse engineer but there's
thousands of tables across a bunch of schemas and with the GUI, I'm
concerned about accuracy when scrolling through all the checkboxes for
what tables I want to capture. If I could just do it from the command
line, it would be so much faster!