Relational database data explorer / visualization?

Posted by Ian Boyd on Stack Overflow See other posts from Stack Overflow or by Ian Boyd
Published on 2010-02-03T18:10:57Z Indexed on 2010/06/05 19:52 UTC
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Is there a tool that can let one browse relational data as a graph of connected nodes?

For example, i'm faced with trying to cleanse some anomolous data. i can start with two offending rows. In this particular example, the TransactionID should, by business rules, be unique to the table, but i find a transaction that violates that rule:

SELECT * FROM LCTTrans
WHERE TransactionID = 1075048

LCTID      TransactionID
=========  =============
4358       1075048
4359       1075048

2 row(s) affected

But really what i want to begin to hunt down all the related data, to try to see which is right. So this hypothetical software would start by showing me these two rows:

alt text

Next, i want to see that transaction that is linked into this table:

alt text

Now that transaction points to an MAL, so show me that:

alt text

Now lets add those two LCTs, that the transaction is "on". A transaction can be on only one LCT, yet this one is pointing to two:

alt text

Okay computer, both of those LCTs point to an MAL and the transaction that created them, show me those:

alt text

Those last two transactions, they also point at an MAL, and they themselves point to an LCT, show me those:

alt text

Okay, now are there any entries in LCTTrans that point to LCTs 4358 or 4359?...

And so on, and so on.

Now i did all this manually, running single selects, copying and pasting uniqueidentifier keys and converting them into friendly id numbers so i could easily see the relationships.


Is there software that can do this?

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