Re: Automatic diagram layout

[Aaron Trevena <aaron trevena gmail com>]

2009/5/15 Lars Ræder Clausen <lars raeder dk>:
> On Fri, 2009-05-15 at 09:30 -0300, Adriano Bonat wrote:
> > Hi guys,
> >
> > I used, with success, "Postgresql autodoc" to reverse engineer my
> > database, but it generates a Dia diagram without a layout, and having
> > about ~60 tables with several associations would take a lot of my time
> > to organize it, and also, wouldn't be the best layout.
> >
> > So I was wondering if there isn't already a way to do this layout
> > organization. I tried to figure out to maybe try to design the same
> > diagram using graphviz and then try to map its calculated coordinates
> > to the Dia diagram, but no luck.

> There has been some effort at making graphviz output dia files, and I
> seem to remember it working, though it's been a while.

graphviz has an option to output dia xml documented somewhere (in a
locked toilet cubicle with a sign saying 'beware of the leopard' on
the door) that I can never find.

>  Also checkout Autodia, which is the most advanced autogenerator for Dia.

:)

now available from a CPAN mirror near you.

> I will challenge your claim that a hand-crafted layout would not be the
> best layout, though.  An automatic layouter should never be used for
> more than a rough draft, as it has no understanding of what belongs
> where.

Yup - I tend to prune and re-organise anything more than a dozen nodes.

> The best it can hope for is to make connected things be close together,
> but that's not necessarily meaningful.

Quite.

A.

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