It’s been a while since we presented any new example data models, so today’s post is an attempt to rectify that with a model of the Bills of Materials tables in Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012, produced using Safyr®.
MS Dynamics Bills of Material data model in Safyr ER Diagrammer tool
We used Safyr® for Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 to build this model. It took about 5 mins to produce, 4 mins of that being the inevitable work to make the diagram look more presentable.
The model was created following some analysis in Safyr and then exported to Safyr’s own ER Diagrammer tool. The diagram is shown with the ‘Business names’ for each object, rather than the ‘physical’ Table and Column names.
In the case of Dynamics AX there is not a huge difference between the two, unlike other packages (notably SAP) where the ‘technical’ object name is often meaningless.
The starting point for building this model was a search for ‘Bills of Material’ on the Dynamics AX descriptive name in Safyr. This quickly identified ‘Bills of materials’ (technical name BOMTable) as a key table, and it was easy to then look at related tables to get a clear picture of the extended set of tables holding Bill of Materials information.
Safyr displaying Tables Relationship information for Bills of Materials in MS Dynamics AX
In this instance I easily selected a set of related tables from the Tables Relationships Window to save as a Safyr Subject Area which I then exported into our own ER Diagrammer tool.
I could just as easily and quickly exported the same model to ER/Studio or erwin or to Data Catalog tools including those from Collibra, Informatica or ASG or in other formats.
As we have mentioned before in other blog posts, the tables and relationships required for any given project will depend on the scope of the work involved – and only the project team know what that is.
And that’s one of the benefits of Safyr: to allow project teams to do their own analysis and ‘scoping’, without having to be an expert in the package.
This is why Safyr is so effective in reducing the time and resource needed to locate the right tables from the source application in the context of the project requirement and then making those available to other tools and technologies.
In addition it provides benefits to the organisation in terms of quality of data and the business’ trust in the data.
As we are providing something which is usable in some contexts… here is the legal bit. In no event will Silwood Technology Ltd be liable for any indirect, special or consequential loss arising out of or in any way relating to the use or performance or the use or misuse of the information presented in this model.