I have been continuing to develop a Visio interface for SQL Server 2017 Graph databases because I believe it will be of great use in many scenarios, such as crime investigations, company and shareholder relationships, and anywhere that defining and illustrating links between items is important.
SQL Server 2017 introduced graph tables, Nodes & Edges, which is a great way of storing relationships between objects. However, there is no easy way of creating or visualising this information currently. Visio is a data-diagramming application, so what could be more natural than to use Visio to create and visualise the data?
All Visio shapes can contain data, and are easily connected to each other, so creating meaningful relationships is a breeze. Visio diagrams can be automated too, and this solution is a C# VSTO add-in that enhances the normal Visio interface. The application also has the ability to define the shapes, labels, colours and appearance from the data values, which are stored as Json objects.
An import from Excel is also provided because of its tremendous ability to gather and re-shape data from so many different sources.
The solution automatically creates SQL views of each graph table so that the data can be linked to Visio and used in Power BI too.
