What’s Erviz?

Note
I’m in the process of forking Erviz. The fork is almost done. The Linux packages are prepared and almost ready to be submitted. (27. Sep 03:47 UTC)
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Erviz, written by Mitsuru Kono, is a tool that makes it easy to create entity-relation models and the best thing it’s free!

You can run it on Windows, Linux and Mac but for the latter a patch is required which will be discussed later on this page.

Creating the entity-relation diagram

Only these two steps have to be followed:

1. Create a text file and define all your entities and relationships. The syntax is simple as example shows:

   
   # Using Erviz 1.0.6
   {title: "Syn2Stock ERD V3"; title-size: 20}
   
   # Entities
   
   [Item] {color:red}
    *Item ID
     Type
     SimpleItem
     Bar Code
     Name
     Amount
     Owner  
     Comment
     Attachments
     Sources
     Source ID*
     Location ID*
     Lending ID*
   
   [Source]
    *Source ID
     Price
     Homepage
     Manufacturer
   
   [Location]
    *Location ID
     GPS Coordinates
     Name
     Room
     Locker
   
   [Lending]
    *Lending ID
     Borrowed by
     Borrowed on
     Returned on
     Reminder ID*
   
   [Reminder]
    *Reminder ID
     Start Date
     Repeat Interval
     End Date
     Active
     Action
     Email
     Phone
     Message
     Item ID*
     Lending ID*
   
   [Event]
     *Event ID
     Event Type
     Date
     User
     Item ID*
   
   [Attachment]
    *Attachment ID
     File
     External URL
     Private
   
   [Electronic Part] {color:orange}
    *Electronic Part ID
     Value
     Item ID*
   
   [Book] {color:orange}
    *Book ID
     Subtitle
     Author
     Publisher
     Paperback
     Language
     Review
     Summary
     About the Author
     Item ID*
   
   # Relationships
   [Item] *--* [Source]
   [Item] 1--1 [Location]
   [Item] 1--* [Lending]
   [Item] *--* [Attachment]
   [Reminder] ---- [Item] 
   [Event] *--1 [Item] 
   [Electronic Part] ---- [Item] 
   [Book] ---- [Item] 
   
   

2. Then turn the text file into the ERD image by calling the convert-files script.

   

Where do I get it?

Since I’m in the process of forking Erviz it will be rereleased on the new project page. In the meantime you can download the old but non-maintained version here:

erviz-1.0.6-bin

md5: dbfa20515118535c106032c8200163c6
sha256: 8f1fb3832eb33a1aef2f0a7b439949e9b132ee4ff73f5b18bea174dc1f7bd21e

erviz-1.0.6-src

md5: 90d8a9c7dc74b07cfb44484823ed0059
sha256: b9273fff329550951d57bcf201be85e5a9cfe0d1592bfc90077a2a385b274565

What else do I need?

Java 6 and Graphviz.

Apple doesn’t offer Java 6 or greater for 32-bit macs but fortunately there’s SoyLatte, a FreeBSD Java port which brings Java 6 back.

I wrote a script that installs it for you. Download the Java 6 Installer, extract the archive, open a Terminal and execute

chmod 755 install_java6.sh
./install_java6.sh

Graphviz can be downloaded from graphviz.org or install the macports package by executing

sudo port install graphviz

How do I install it?

Setup

Download and extract erviz. Its folder contains two setup files, one for windows and one for Linux/Unix/Mac.

localhome:erviz-1.0.6 slopjong$ ls -l
total 32
drwxr-xr-x@ 11 slopjong  admin   374 27 Jul  2010 _setup_
-rw-r--r--@  1 slopjong  admin    86 27 Jul  2010 readme_1st.txt
-rw-r--r--@  1 slopjong  admin  2449 27 Jul  2010 setup.cmd
-rw-r--r--@  1 slopjong  admin  2853 27 Jul  2010 setup.sh

The next step is linux/unix/mac specific so have a look at the readme file to see how it’s done on windows.

Change the file permission to 755 and launch the setup script.

localhome:erviz-1.0.6 slopjong$ chmod 755 setup.sh 
localhome:erviz-1.0.6 slopjong$ ./setup.sh 

It asks you if you want to install the English or Japanese version. Type in 1 or 2.

Select language number. (Enter 'q' to quit.)

1: English
2: Japanese

-n Language: 
1
copying... [./_setup_/common/bin/*] -> [./bin/*]
copying... [./_setup_/common/html-docs/*] -> [./html-docs/*]
copying... [./_setup_/common/work/*] -> [./work/*]
copying... [./_setup_/unix/bin/*] -> [./bin/*]
copying... [./_setup_/en/docs/*] -> [./docs/*]
copying... [./_setup_/en/work/*] -> [./work/*]
copying... [./_setup_/en-unix/bin/*] -> [./bin/*]
copying... [./_setup_/en-unix/work/*] -> [./work/*]
permission changing... [./bin/*.sh]
permission changing... [./work/scripts/*.sh]
copying... [./work/scripts/text2png-ie.sh] -> [./work/text2png-ie.sh]
copying... [./work/scripts/text2png-idef1x.sh] -> [./work/text2png-idef1x.sh]
moving... [./docs/readme.txt] -> [./readme.txt]

Completed

See ./readme.txt

On windows and Linux you’re done. Mac users must patch as described next.

Patching

Download this patch file and extract it into your erviz installation folder. Change into the bin directory and simulate the patching with the option –dry-run to see if the patch will work for you.

localhome:erviz-1.0.6 slopjong$ cd bin/
localhome:bin slopjong$ patch --dry-run -p1 -i ../erviz.patch 

If you get the following output the patch would have worked.

patching file convert-files.sh
patching file erviz.sh
patching file messages.sh

Now run the patch again but without the –dry-run option this time.

localhome:bin slopjong$ patch -p1 -i ../erviz.patch 
patching file convert-files.sh
patching file erviz.sh
patching file messages.sh

Patch done. Wasn’t this easy?

How do I use it?

After you wrote your model (or copied it from above) you translate it into layered drawings of directed graphs by executing

./erviz.sh -i your_model.txt -o graph.dot

your_model.txt is the input file and the result of this script will be written into graph.dot. This will be the input file for the other script.

./convert-files.sh graph.dot

You should get graph.png, your ERD image.