High-Level Entity Relationship Diagram (ERD) In Microsoft Dynamics 365

Entity Relationship Diagram (ERD) is a structural diagram that is useful in database design.

ERD shows how two entities relate or connect.

In a typical ER diagram, you can find shapes (e.g., rectangles) and connectors (lines with different styles of their ends. They represent one-to-one, one-to-many, or many-to-many relationships.

With Dynamics 365 implementation and development, ERD can be very useful, especially when designing new functionalities.

First ERD, then actual design and development: This strategy will always help you identify relationships, derive scenarios, and even find limitations of the design.

ERD is not only helpful in creation but also management and maintenance of the feature/functionality.

Some important terms in ERD:

• Entity: Helps you model and manage business data (same as tables in a database)
• Attributes: Holds a single value in an entity (also known as a field)
• Primary Key: Uniquely identifies a record in an entity (GUID in Dynamics 365 entity)
• Relationship: Signifies that two entities are related to each other (1:1, 1:N, N:N)

Simple Example: New Bank Account entity and how it relates to the Account entity.

You can use the metadata diagram tool to generate entity-relationship diagrams. Click to learn more about the metadata diagram tool.

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