Creating Data Vault Entities with Relationships

You can create new entities in a data vault diagram using the context menu and new relationships with an entity's carousel. If you want to create relationships to an entity that already exists, drag this entity from other tool window and drop it in the diagram.

Creating a New Data Vault Entity

How to proceed

  1. Place the mouse pointer at the chosen position in the diagram and select one of the entity templates from the mini toolbar in the context menu.

    A new entity is created in the diagram. The name of the entity is automatically selected to be edited.

  2. Enter the name for the entity and confirm with the [Enter] key.

Adding and Existing Entity

How to proceed

  • Drag the entity in another tool window and drop it where you want it in the diagram.

    An entity node that shows the existing entity is created in the diagram.

Creating a New Relationship

Prerequisites

The default profile contains various create templates for relationships; these are available in the carousel. These vary by and large in their cardinalities. These create templates are structured in such a way that the entity first selected contains the referenced key and the entity selected next is assigned the foreign key for the relationship.

Whether a relationship gets a foreign key and whether both entities affected own this foreign key depends on the relationship cardinalities. Only one entity with no more than one incoming relationship can contain the foreign key for this relationship.

How to proceed

  1. Select an entity in the diagram.

    The carousel appears next to the entity.

  2. Drag the desired relationship from the carousel and drop the icon on the partner entity. This can be the entity you first selected.

    The new relationship is created in the diagram. If the first entity has a key and cardinalities of the relationship permit a foreign key, this then automatically appears in the second entity. An attribute in the foreign key then exists for each attribute of the referencing key in the second entity.