How to transform an Informix database into a meaningful into entity /

[lsantos]

I have to constantly explore and extract data from a large Informix database. The database is part of a 3rd party package that our organisation uses.

In order to write SQL’s and reports (e.g. Crystal Reports) I always struggle to find out where the various bits and pieces of information are stored. As you might understand this becomes a tedious and at times frustrating exercise. I tried to obtain an entity relationship diagram from the software supplier but they told me they didn’t have such thing!?

My question: Is there a way to transform the informix database definitions into a E/R diagram or into a report/format that I can use to draw an E/R myself?

 

[vpshriyan]

Hi,

There may be several professional software available in the market to do this job. One such tool I know is CASE Studio 2 is a database designing tool that allows you to visually create Entity Relationship diagrams (ERD) for various database systems.

More Info:

http://www.casestudio.com/

You can use Informix backend schema printing utility
"dbschema" to get all the objects existing in a database. A normal syntax would look like:
dbschema -d <database> -ss <outputfile>

Using this textual layout you may able decipher how the objects are inter-related.

Regards,
Shriyan