database properties

[Gator Geek]

Hi !

Can anyone help me to read the database properties from Visio ? I have some
entities that I have reverse-engineered and I want to read the description or
notes of the columns associated with the entity.

Any help or hint would be helpful.
Thanks in advance.

- GG

 

[Chris Roth [ Visio MVP ]]

This info is officially not published, but you might be able to dig around
and find something. The places I'd look are:

- Window > Show ShapeSheet for every shape. Not sure how much info is stored
there.
- Look for SolutionXML in the document. (check out the developer's help for
'SolutionXML')
- Look at the local document stencil for the master "Database Model". This
is probably some sort of COM object, "bit bucket" that stores the model
data. You can access the object like this:

Visio.ActiveDocument.Masters("Database model").Shapes(1).Object

This thing is some sort of COM or ActiveX control, and I have no idea if or
how you can look into it. If there are tools for discovering this, or
somehow generating the type library for it, then you might be in luck.

I'm at the edge of my knowledge, so good luck!


--

Hope this helps,

Chris Roth
Visio MVP

 

[Chris Roth [ Visio MVP ]]

The mystery object is located here:

C:\Program Files\Visio 2003\Visio11\DLL\VISXDATA.DLL

Or something similar on your machine.

I couldn't generate a type library for it. Perhaps there are other ways of
snooping into .dlls? This is C++ ueber-geek stuff that I don't know about
: )

--

Hope this helps,

Chris Roth
Visio MVP

 

[Gator Geek]

Thanks for your prompt answers, Chris.
Looked up all your leads and unfortunately couldn't get anywhere. :-(

By any chance would you know how to connect to the IVMEModel using VBA or
COM?? This interface can possibly solve all the problems. I just have to
figure out how to connect to it?

Thanks again !

- GG

 

[David Parker [Visio MVP]]

Try http://www.orthogonalsoftware.com/products.html