For some, Entity Relationship Diagrams (ERDs) are old friends that you still visit once in a while and have some fun with. For others…not so much. Let’s try to help the latter get up to speed on ERDs.
By Rafael Victória-Pereira
An Entity Relationship Diagram (ERD) is a visual representation of different data using conventions that describe how these data relate to each other. While able to describe just about any system, ERDs are most often associated with the complex databases used in software engineering and IT networks. In particular, ERDs are frequently used during the design stage of a development process to identify different system elements and their relationships to each other. As you might imagine, this can be particularly helpful when modernizing a database.