How to visualize relation between objects in a database?

Question

I have a database which I want to visualize in some kind of tool. Let me explain the basic: Company A does business with Transport Company A and Transport Company B. Transport Company A does business with Company A, Company B and Company C. Company C does business with Transport Company A and Transport Company B.

As you can see every Company does business with different Transport Companies and vice versa. These relationships can be implemented in a database, and when drawing a visual model on paper this is also very easy.

Of course the model should contain hundreds of Companies and Transport Companies. So I want to have a visualizing tool, where a overview of these relations can be displayed.

My question is which tools can be used for realizing this?

Answer 1

I think you want to look at Microsoft Visio (get the 2010 version. 2013 is almost unusable from a database standpoint).

But if i am assuming correctly, you want to create a table per company. Don't do this! this can cause redundancy and data integrity problems. you want to create just one table and create what is called a unary many-to-many relationship. This is relationship that can be translated to many different rows can relate to many rows in the same table. I won't go into more detail unless you want me to, as i spent a week or 2 in my Database Design course last month just on many-to-many relationships and gets kinda complicated.