Entities & Relations

 

The Add Entity (shot for Add Entity Type) and Add Relation (short for Add Relation Type) buttons at the top of the dialog let you create new Entity Types and Relation Types.

 

Each entity type and relation type must be associated with at least one table from the data, so pressing Add Entity or Add Relation first opens up a  Choose A Table Dialog dialog where you specify which table to use for that record type.

 

After selecting a table in the Choose A Table dialog you are taken to either the Edit Entity Dialog or the Edit Relation Dialog. 

 

When you have completed adding the entity type or relation type it will appear in the Entities list or Relation list.

 

Adding a relation type may also result in new entity types being created that correspond to the endpoints of the relation type.  These can be see in the Entities list.

 

Note:  Review the Entities list to make sure it does not contain redundant entity types that represent the same kind of object. For instance if you have data about people who've sent emails to each other, you should not see "sender" and "recipient" as two separate entity types.  Instead, there should only be one entity type called "person".  If you see redundant entity types, this is probably because you incorrectly specified the endpoint for a relation type. If you see this you should delete one of the redundant entities types, as well as the relation type which had it as an endpoint, and create a proper relation type instead.