Progressively Develop Conceptual, Logical and Physical ERDs

July 29, 2011

Entity-Relationship Diagrams (ERDs) come in 3 types in general. They describe data models on 3 levels of abstraction – conceptual, logical and physical, ranging from high-level ideas to details required for implementation. With Visual Paradigm products (e.g. VP-UML), you can systematically and easily progress through these stages of development in data modeling.

Editing Business Process Elements and Requirements ID

July 17, 2009

There is ID property in Business Process elements (such as Task, Sub-process, Gateway) and Requirements. The ID property is unique within the project, and it can be visualized in diagram, export to image and report. The ID can be used for unique identify specific model element.

Configurable animation shape color and speed

July 17, 2009

More and more modelers use the Animacian to do their presentation, export the animation to Macromedia Flash to Intranet. With Animacian, you can see how your design in action by selecting different execution paths. In the VP Suite 4.0 SP1, modeler can customize the color theme of the animation and tune the speed of the animation.

Supporting completion of Entity

July 17, 2009

The context based diagram only show portion of entities and relationships which are related to the context. Modeler can show one entity in two diagrams (shared model) and changes of the entities will be visualized in two diagrams. Visual Paradigm introduce new completion support for shared model usage.

Splitting diagram view vertically and horizontally

July 17, 2009

Sometimes, we want to compare the northern part of the diagram with the southern part of the diagram and skip the middle part. In VP Suite 4.0 SP1, there is split diagram function. Modeler can split the diagram vertically or horizontally.

Generating MS Word 2007 report

July 17, 2009

In VP Suite 4.0 SP1, Visual Paradigm enhanced the MS Word report generation to support generate report in Word 2007 format and speed up the report generation process. In a very large project, the report generation speed improved more then 50%.

Supporting Layer in Published Project

July 17, 2009

In VP Suite 4.0 SP1, the published project also support layer. The diagram viewer can show/hide layer(s) using browser. Just like modeler show/hide layer(s) in VP Suite.

Compare Logical and Physical ERD

April 20, 2009

Since physical ERD and logical ERD represent the business requirement and database schema respectively, comparing physical and logical ERD helps to find out the differences between them, thus confirming the database is exactly following the initial business requirements regardless of the changes.

Reference Other Project's Model Elements

April 20, 2009

Project referencing is a feature that enable us to reference to an external project, and uses its model element in our own project. With this feature, we can analyze projects' data by visualizing different projects' model elements in a single diagram.

Layer Support to Show/Hide Set of Shape with Single Click

April 20, 2009

Diagram Layer is a feature to help categorizing shapes into different distinct layers. We can use a separate layer for annotation, we also can place alternative paths of a flow in a separate layer. Since layers can be shown or hide, it provides an ideal solution for controlling the portion of diagram to appear on diagram.