Configuring Siebel eBusiness Applications > Working with the Entity Relationship Designer >

About the Entity Relationship Designer

The Entity Relationship Designer is a visual design tool that you use to create entity relationship diagrams (ERDs) to represent your business. You then map the entities and relationships depicted in the diagram to objects in the Siebel repository, such as business components, links, and joins.

The Entity Relationship Designer provides a drag-and-drop environment for creating ERDs. It allows you to show cardinality between entities using the diagraming convention commonly called crows feet. It provides various edit and layout options, such as aligning shapes, moving shapes, and modifying text. When binding entities and relations to Siebel objects, the Entity Relationship Designer filters the list of objects that you choose from to include only those objects that support the context represented in the ERD. When no business components are suitable for binding, you can launch a wizard from within the Entity Relationship Designer to assist you in creating a new business component.

Using the ERD to diagram business entities and map them to Siebel objects has the following benefits:

• Requires less work to define data model requirements.
• Initial mapping of data requirements to the Siebel data model is more efficient and effective because lists of components are constrained to only those that fit the context described in the ERD.
• Improves your ability to trace configuration changes back to data model requirements.
• Creates a permanent record of ER design in the Siebel repository.