Microsoft Office Reference Guide

Mar 26, 2004

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In recent weeks, I've explored various scenarios wherein a front end (Excel and Xcelsius) interacts with and links to a back end database, using an Access table as an example.

This week, I thought I'd have a bit of fun with Visio. I'll show you how to connect a Visio diagram, using one of the data wizards in the program, with our Surrealty real estate database.

My plan is to drop shapes — representing the homes in my database — onto a Visio diagram, displaying a map of the area where the homes are located.

The first thing I do is open Visio to a blank new diagram, and type "house" in the Shape Search window. This way, I find a couple of shapes that can represent my homes for sale.

Figure 708

I drag-and-drop each of these shapes onto the diagram. If I click on the Stencil menu bar and select to open my Document stencil, those shapes are already there and available again.

Figure 709

Then I Insert a New Page; make it a Background; and name it Map.

Figure 710

For demo purposes, I insert a cropped screen capture of the Yahoo map of the area of West Los Angeles where the homes are located, and stretch it to fit the page. I also change the Page Properties under the File Menu to a Landscape orientation for the diagram.

Figure 711

I return to the main page and change it to Landscape as well, and then make sure that it uses the "Map" as it background.

Figure 712

Now the fun begins. I have two potential shapes on the diagram already, with no custom properties. I will work with these shapes after shrinking them a bit, to fit better on the map.

Instead of creating Custom Properties, however, I click Tools > Add Ons > Visio Extras > Link to Database.

(My Custom Properties window is open. If yours isn't, click to open it under the View > Custom Properties menu.)

Figure 713

Because we haven't linked to a database before, we have to Create a new link to the table in our Surrealty database.

Figure 714

Clicking create launches a wizard that enables you to browse to the Surrealty.MDB database we have created earlier. The tricky part is that the wizard will, by default, look for *.DSN files to open – which we created in your dynamic link from Excel to Access a few weeks ago.

To browse to the database itself, change the file types to All Files. Then locate the database file itself, to create the new named Database link, putting it into the New field and clicking OK.

Figure 715

With the database file linked, we need to select the Table whose fields will be linked to the shape from the dropdown menu.

Figure 716

When we click OK — check this out – the Custom Properties window automatically reflects the field definitions for the table we selected!

Figure 717

With our newly linked shape created, it's time to make it a Master. I create a New Stencil (opening the Shapes drop down list), and right-click to rename it Homes.

Figure 718

By dropping the linked shape onto my new stencil, I have a shape that I continually use to connect to different records in my table.

To make sure I safeguard all of my work so far, including my new stencil with the linked shape, I save everything as a *.VST (Visio Template) file.

Figure 719

Now when you drop the master shape onto the diagram, you can right-click to select a record that it will represent, and that record's custom properties are shown in the window.

Figure 720

If you change a custom property, such as lowering the house price (like that'll ever happen in Los Angeles!), you can right-click to Update the database record, which is linked to the table in the Access database.

But what about using the diagram to add new records?

We can begin with a shape based on the master we created, since it has the custom properties we got from the linked database. In the Custom Properties window, all we need to do is add a new value for the Primary Key (prop.ID here) and add more info in the Custom Properties Window. Now when we right-click and choose Refresh Database, Visio asks whether we want to add a new record to the table with the values we put in the Custom Properties window.

Figure 721

In this instance, we only changed the primary key from 9 to 10 and left some of the fields the same.

And, indeed, when we open the linked database in Access, we see a new record with some redundant fields in the Listings Table.

Figure 722

So what we've done is created a visual representation of our table on top of a map of the area, onto which we can drop shapes that represent the homes we have for sale into the neighborhoods where they are located. We can view the properties of the homes in the Custom Properties window, and update their details in the underlying database, and even add new property listings to the table.

Obviously this info can also be published to a Web page based on the Visio diagram, and the custom properties can also appear in a Web browser.

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