Monday 7 May 2012

How can we publish a data model for non-ERWIN user?


        ERWIN is one of the popular data modeling tool from CA. Using this we will be able to prepare the data models and will be able to extract the script for a physical database.
All the type of relationship can be represented using various types of notations.
One major attraction is we will be able to generate “html” based reports with the model diagrams and this we can publish to the users through a website.
I have faced some issue at first and did not find any specific articles to resolve those.
So I thought of putting it in my blog for the others.

1.    How can we publish a data model for non-ERWIN user?
(How can we publish a data model through an internal site?)

First of all we have to understand ERWIN is License software which needs to be installed in a PC. The model which we are preparing will be saving with an extension “*.erwin”. This file is open-able through ERWIN software. These files will be heavy and not easy to send through mails. So we want to send this to another person who does not have ERWIN installed, we have to adopt another mechanism.

Here ERWIN is providing a mechanism to publish the model, as per the need. For this we can prepare the report –template using which we need to publish the model.
Here I am demonstrating how can we prepare an ERWIN report and how can we publish it.
Here I am having a ‘Main Subject Area’ which is having 4 tables and 3 other subject-area which is “subset” of main subject area. Each subject-area consists of two tables each.
Here I am not demonstrated how we can create subject-area, as that information is easily available in the net.

Now I am showing how we can prepare an ERWIN report. For this we have to go to ToolsàReport Template BuilderàReport Builder.

In the “Report Template” screen click ‘new’ then you can see the below screen. Double click on “Document Untitled” then you can edit it as below
Check the ‘Export’ as well


Now add the diagram and required stuff to the report.
Click on “Picture” on the left pan and then the arrow button to add it to the report.
Now double click on “Current Stored Display”
Now change to “Specify Stored Display(s) at Run Time”













Then save the Report Template. Now we can execute the report template to generate the report.





Select the Subject-areas; here I have selected all of them.













Once you click the “ok” button it will generate the HTML reports, and will open it using the browser.
Using IIS or file-share we can publish it.  IIS is the best way to do this.