ERD Symbols and Meanings

Crow's foot notation is used in Barker's Notation, Structured Systems Analysis and Design Method (SSADM) and information engineering. Crow's foot diagrams represent entities as boxes, and relationships as lines between the boxes. Different shapes at the ends of these lines represent the cardinality of the relationship.
The Chen's ERD notation is still used and is considered to present a more detailed way of representing entities and relationships.
To create an ERD, software engineers mainly turn to dedicated drawing software, which contain the full notation resources for their specific database design - ERD symbols and meanings. CS Odessa has released an all-inclusive Entity-Relationship Diagram (ERD) solution for their powerful drawing program, ConceptDraw DIAGRAM.

Entity Relationship Diagram Symbols

Creating an entity-relationship (ER) model is to visually represent the structure of a business database, where data equates to entities (or objects) that are linked by defined relationships expressing dependencies and requirements. By nature it is an abstract visualization, the first step in the design process towards creating a logical and functional database.
ERD symbols used for professional ERD drawing are collected in libraries from the Entity-Relationship Diagram (ERD) solution for ConceptDraw DIAGRAM.

Components of ER Diagram

ConceptDraw gives the ability to draw ER diagram (ERD) for visual describing database using the entity relationship symbols, work flow shapes, entity relationship stencils. Entity-Relationship model making possibility to describe a database using the components of ER Diagram in which in the tables data can be the point to data in other tables - for instance, your entry in the database could point to several entries.

Martin ERD Diagram

The vector stencils library Crow's Foot Notation from the solution Entity-Relationship Diagrams (ERD) contains specific symbols of the Crow's foot notation such as relationship symbols and entity symbols for ConceptDraw DIAGRAM diagramming and vector drawing software. The Entity-Relationship Diagrams (ERD) solution is contained in the Software Development area of ConceptDraw Solution Park.

Data structure diagram with ConceptDraw DIAGRAM

Data structure diagram (DSD) is intended for description of conceptual models of data (concepts and connections between them) in the graphic format for more obviousness. Data structure diagram includes entities description, connections between them and obligatory conditions and requirements which connect them. Create Data structure diagram with ConceptDraw DIAGRAM.

Chen ERD Diagram

The vector stencils library Chen ERD from the solution Entity-Relationship Diagrams (ERD) contains specific symbols of the Chen ERD notation including entity symbols and relationship symbols for ConceptDraw DIAGRAM diagramming and vector drawing software. The Entity-Relationship Diagrams (ERD) solution is contained in the Software Development area of ConceptDraw Solution Park.

Developing Entity Relationship Diagrams

When you need to visually represent the structure of relational database, Entity relationship diagram (ERD) is a type of diagram for that case.
Most entity-relationship diagrams can be built with objects from Flowchart solution or ERD Solution which contains inbuilt templates. Follow these steps to create your own custom ERD diagram.
Don't be frightened if it looks complex, ConceptDraw DIAGRAM makes it easy to create an ERD, and hundreds of other diagrams, in minutes.

Entity Relationship Software

Entity Relationship Diagrams (ERD) illustrate the logical structure of databases.
The vector graphic diagrams produced when using the ConceptDraw ERD solution can be used in whitepapers, presentations, datasheets, posters, or any technical materials.
It is convenient to design ER Diagrams using ConceptDraw DIAGRAM software. ConceptDraw DIAGRAM extended with the Entity-Relationship Diagram (ERD) solution supports Chen's and Crow’s Foot notations that are often used to describe database structure.

ConceptDraw DIAGRAM Database Modeling Software

ConceptDraw DIAGRAM is a very easy-to-use and intuitive database design tool which can save you hundreds of work hours. See database diagram samples created with ConceptDraw DIAGRAM database modeling database diagram software.