I wrote an article last year for Microsoft, using Visio to explain some bits of messaging and encryption (see Musings on MVP Open Day 2016 at Bletchley Park.pdf ). I finished the article with an unexplained image of a word, well the solution was obviously “BOWIE”, as written on the cover of his final album, Blackstar, released exactly one year ago today.
The news is out: due to popular demand DBRE (Database Reverse Engineering) is [almost] back in Visio. It is currently out in preview, as announced in MS Power User , for Visio Pro for Office365 users at least. It is, however, only providing support for MS SQL Server and Oracle Server, although there is an ODBC Generic Driver too.
My test machine is a Surface Pro 1, which does not have SQL Server installed, so my instinct was to test DBRE with a SQL Azure database that I created for my eXplore Visio app ( see Windows Store ).
Try as I might, I could not get the full database structure with the Microsoft SQL Server driver that I had installed by default. With a little help from Microsoft, I discovered that I needed to download the Microsoft ODBC Driver 13 for SQL Server from Microsoft ( see Download Driver). However, I still needed to set the default database for Visio to use as Microsoft SQL Server, not ODBC Generic Driver. In retrospect, it makes sense, but it did confuse me for a while.
Once I understood that, I was able to change my default database to the desired visioFeatures one, and to reverse engineer my SQL Azure database tables, views and stored procedures.
This article describes how to open a Microsoft Access form at a specific record from a Visio shape. I was an Access developer before I was a Visio developer, and both of the applications have VBA to provide tactical solutions for everyday tasks. Fortunately, it is fairly simple to copy the VBA code from one application to another…
Firstly, I am assuming that both of the desktop applications are open, and although Visio shapes can be linked to Access queries and tables, it is not essential for this solution.
Microsoft blogged the launch of Visio for iPad and Visio Online Preview yesterday ( see blogs.office.com ). This should be welcome news to every Visio user who wants to increase the consumption of their carefully crafted diagrams. These two new ways of viewing Visio documents (for free) have different capabilities, so I have put some slides together that describe the current differences. Coincidently, Microsoft also announced the upcoming Windows 10 on ARM processors ( see Windows Central ), so the ability to create Visio diagrams is going to be possible on mobile devices too!
[Read more…] about Visio is coming to the web and iOS – Dec. 2016I am on my way home after presenting and demoing Visio and SharePoint BPM portals at Kistamassan near Stockholm. I was staying at the Scandic Victoria Tower right next door. Very handy, and very tall. It is a striking building, as can be seen in my photos below, however, speaking as an ex-architect, I was disappointed to find the modern interior spoilt by large, but inadequate, curtains that took several minutes to draw over the large number of triangular windows in my room. I really think it would have been worth installing electric auto-tinting glass.
[Read more…] about MS TechDays Sweden 2016 – Visio and SharePoint BPM portalsIt is becoming clear that Microsoft are making Visio Pro for Office365 (VPfO) their priority. Its update cadence is much quicker than the non-cloud versions of Visio, and there are some features that may not make it to them. A case in point is partner templates and sample diagrams. It appears that Categories has been renamed as Templates in VPfO and there is a new tab named Sample Diagrams. The Partner Templates are at the bottom of the Templates tab, and there is a Partner Sample Diagrams section too on the Sample Diagrams tab.
I am pleased to note that five of my templates made it into the Education category. Each of these templates are from earlier blog posts here!
