Re: Messy data models (Re: Visualize database schema)

Short answer: no. Even with a good auto-layout, nothing (up to now) beats a
human made one because the latter will incorporate semantic which is not
available to the modeling tool; for example, positioning, spacing and
routing of relations will respect some sense of aesthetic and organization
that are quite subjective. The only practical solution to untangle a
complex model is to split it into sub-models and use aliases to reference
tables in another sub-model.

Sébastien

On Fri, Aug 17, 2012 at 9:07 AM, Wolfgang Keller <feliphil(at)gmx(dot)net> wrote:

> > Concerning auto-layout, most if not all tools I have used up to now
> > make a mess for anything that is not dead simple.
>
> If a data model can not be reasonably "untangled" by an auto-layout
> algorithm (such as e.g. Graphviz) for display as a human-readable graph,
> wouldn't that mean that this model is a mess from the modeling point of
> view?
>
> In fact, shouldn't reasonably well-designed data models at least mostly
> follow SER principles? In that case, they could be displayed
> essentially as a tree.
>
> Could the "messy-ness" (or not) of the display of a data model (given
> a standard alorithm such as Graphviz) be used as a criterion to judge
> whether the model is actually well-structured?
>
> Sincerely,
>
> Wolfgang
>
>
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