Developer .NET UPDATE, June 10, 2003

Developer .NET UPDATE—brought to you by the Windows & .NET Magazine Network

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June 10, 2003--In this issue:

1. Developer .NET Perspectives

2. Announcements

3. Resource

4. Events

5. New and Improved

6. Contact Us

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1. Developer .NET Perspectives

by Bill Sheldon, [email protected]

http://www.microsoft.com/office/visio/evaluation/indepth/devtools.asp

At its core, Visio is a tool for creating diagrams. When you start Visio, you're in a traditional multiple-document interface (MDI) application, awaiting the creation of a new document. If you've never used Visio before, I highly recommend that you take a few moments and create a new diagram, such as a simple block diagram, and become familiar with adding shapes, connecting them, and repositioning objects.

Because of the ease with which you can create and edit diagrams, Visio has probably become the primary system-engineering tool for modeling networks. However, you can also use Visio to gain an understanding of the underlying database associated with the Community Starter Kit.

The first step is to create a new Database diagram, specifically a Database Model Diagram. On the File menu, select New, Database, Database Model Diagram. Next, you need to open the database and transfer all the tables from the database into our diagram. Fortunately, you don't need to manually transfer all the tables. Instead, go to the Database menu, which becomes visible when you open a database diagram, and select the Reverse Engineer option. This option launches the Reverse Engineer Wizard.

On the Reverse Engineer Wizard's opening screen, you'll see the "Data sources" and "Install Visio drivers" boxes. The Community Starter Kit's database is either a Microsoft SQL Server or Microsoft SQL Server Desktop Engine (MSDE) database. However, the "Data sources" list box doesn't include SQL Server. So, in the "Install Visio drivers" box, select SQL Server, then click Setup. In the Microsoft SQL Server Setup dialog box, select the ODBC Drivers tab. Scroll to the bottom of the "Select ODBC Drivers to use" list box, select SQL Server, and click OK.

The "Data sources" list box on the Reverse Engineer Wizard's opening screen should now be empty. Click New to open the Create New Data Source dialog box. Select the System Data Source option, then click Next. In the dialog box that appears, select SQL Server and click Next. Finally, enter a name for your ODBC connection and click Finish.

Clicking Finish opens the "Create a New Data Source to SQL Server Wizard." On this wizard's first screen, enter a description for your connection, select the server that's running SQL Server or MSDE, and click Next.

On the second screen of the "Create a New Data Source to SQL Server Wizard," select the authentication mode. If you're logged on as a privileged user, using the default NT Authentication is the easiest option. Click Next.

The third screen of the "Create a New Data Source to SQL Server Wizard" requires customization. The "Change the default database to" check box, which isn't selected by default, lets you change the default database. Instead of connecting to the "master" database on your server, select this check box. Then, in the drop-down list, select the CommunityStarterKit database, which the Community Starter Kit creates during installation. You can accept the remaining defaults on this screen and the next screen, then click Finish.

After the "Create a New Data Source to SQL Server Wizard" creates your new data source, the Reverse Engineer Wizard's opening screen appears again. Click Next to continue the reverse engineering process.

On the Reverse Engineer Wizard's second screen, you need to select which objects you want to reverse engineer. You can accept the default selections from this screen, or if you want to save some processing time, you can clear the "Stored procedures" check box. Click Next.

On the Reverse Engineer Wizard's third screen, you need to select which tables and views you want to reverse engineer. I recommend that you use the Select All option. Click Next.

If you left the "Stored procedures" check box selected on the second screen, the Reverse Engineer Wizard displays a screen on which you choose the stored procedures you want to reverse engineer. If this screen appears, select the stored procedures, and click Next

At this point, the Reverse Engineer Wizard's asks you a simple Yes or No question about whether you want to automatically add shapes to the diagram. The default is No, but I recommend that you select Yes. That way, your diagram will show the database tables. Click Next.

On the last screen, the Reverse Engineer Wizard warns you about the amount of time required to reverse engineer the database's tables. Ignore this warning, accept the default settings, and click Finish.

At this point, Visio connects to your database and reads the structures associated with it. Visio then generates a rather large diagram that will probably be reduced to about 10 percent of its actual size so that you can see the entire diagram. I'll discuss how to analyze this diagram in a future column, but for now, you can examine the diagram to become familiar with it.

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2. Announcements
(brought to you by Windows & .NET Magazine and its partners)

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http://www.sqlmag.com/ssmu

3. Resource

http://www.winnetmag.com/forums/rd.cfm?cid=37&tid=59849

4. Events
(brought to you by Windows & .NET Magazine)

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5. New and Improved
by Sue Cooper, [email protected]

http://www.sembleware.com

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6. Contact Us

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Copyright 2003, Penton Media, Inc.