Tool for visualizing a model

[bricelam]

Similar to the View Entity Data Model (Read-only) command in the EF Power Tools.

[bricelam]

While brainstorming with @rowanmiller, he also mentioned that we could do a one-way generation to a code-based model from the design surface. This could re-use the model snapshot and/or reverse engineer code for generating code from a model. This would allow a designer-based model to be the source of truth.

[rogerhendriks]

This would be a great feature. You once made that super difficult edmx with a nice designer so this should be easy ;) But please do not forget to support views better this time.

[bricelam]

Future @bricelam, don't forget about the super early prototype you started in bricelam/EntityFramework.VisualStudio. You didn't get very far, but it might be a good starting point. You at least got it to do this:

[divega]

Future @bricelam, it would be sweet if we could do something that worked with Visual Studio Code, although at present we don't know how that would look like 😄

[itanex]

Is there any progress on the Model Visualizer? I would love to utilize this with my students who I teach EF basics to.

[bricelam]

@itanex No significant progress. LLBLGen Pro and DevArt Entity Developer are the two EFCore-compatible modelling tools I that know about. (This is not an endorsement. 😇)

[itanex]

@bricelam Thanks for getting back. I was not impressed with DevArt tools. I will check out LLBLGen

[mguinness]

@itanex I had the opposite experience, I wasn't impressed with LLBLGen (not intuitive) but liked Entity Developer. I guess we may have different requirements, but I thought that DevArt provides a similar experience to the old EDMX designer.

I'd recommend anybody that still needs database first take a look at the express edition which although limited to 10 tables does give you a flavor. Ideally "future bricelam" will get to revisit his early prototype :)

[ErikEJ]

FYI: I am getting quite close to a implementation of this in my "EF Core Power Tools" ErikEJ/SqlCeToolbox#462

[ajcvickers]

This is a good idea and we are fully supportive of community efforts in this area, but we don't intend at this time to implement or maintain this in the EF team.

[MarcoLoetscher]

It's a very bad decision to close this issue. This is a high priority feature on  your roadmap. If the costs are too high to ship the function with Visual Studio, it can be provided as an extension. I don't understand why the world's largest software company (Microsoft) cannot recruit enough staff for this project (EF Core). I hope that as many developers as possible will protest against it.

[ErikEJ]

@MarcoLoetscher Have you tried my free Visual Studio extension (EF Core Power Tools)?
I would be happy to work with you on anything that you miss.

[MarcoLoetscher]

@ErikEJ We use EF 6. x in an extensive WPF business application. Unfortunately, there are still some features missing in EF Core for us, so we haven't used EF Core Power Tools yet. Thank you for your work on this extension. The "DbContext Model Diagram" looks very rudimentary for me in comparison to the "Entity Data Model (Read-only)" view in EF Power Tools. I hope that this diagram can be displayed in the future like the old one.

[ErikEJ]

What are you missing - maybe I could add it?

Do you want to create a model from a diagram - this is not this "feature" and not supported/mentioned by the team (EDMX no longer exists) - you can look at the 2 third party tools listed here to help with that: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/ef/core/extensions/

[MarcoLoetscher]

No, I just want to display a read-only model of the DbContext. The Entity Data Model of the old EF Power Tools was much clearer than that of the new one.

[mguinness]

@MarcoLoetscher IMHO your best bet would be to use Entity Developer as it's the closest replacement I could find for the old EDMX designer. I'd encourage you to try the Express Edition (which is limited to 10 tables) to see if it meets your needs.

[julielerman]

I agree with @MarcoLoetscher . It's a tool I cannot build models without and we need it for cross-platform work. I'm happy to use @ErikEJ tool when I'm on windows in vs2017. But that's not my most common scenario. Future @bricelam :

:)

[ErikEJ]

Would SVG format work for you, @julielerman ?

[julielerman]

@ErikEJ The format is not the issue but where I can run it from. If you could take the work you did to make it happen in VS 2017 without depending on the class designer and have an extension for VS Code, that would be amazaballs!

[vslee]

Here's another project which can generate diagrams from existing code. It can also create code from diagrams, similar to "Model First" in EF Classic.
https://github.com/msawczyn/EFDesigner
It does require Visual Studio 2019 though.