Database Development and Visual Database Tools

  • Article

As you design a database, you create database objects such as tables, columns, keys, indexes, relationships, constraints, and views.  To help you create these objects, the Visual Database Tools provides three mechanisms: the Database Designer, the Table Designer, and the View Designer.

  • The Database Designer   A visual tool allowing you to create tables, columns, keys, indexes, relationships, and constraints.  Within the Database Designer, you interact with database objects through database diagrams, which graphically show the structure of the database.  With the Database Designer you can create and modify objects that are visible on diagrams (tables, columns, relationships, and keys) and some objects that are not visible on diagrams (indexes and constraints).

  • The Table Designer   A visual tool allowing you to create an individual table.  Although you can create tables with the Database Designer, the Table Designer is sometimes more convenient for this task, because it devotes a larger portion of the screen to the table and shows more detail about the table as you design it.

  • The View Designer   A visual tool that helps you create views.  Because the SQL syntax for creating views is almost identical to the syntax for creating queries, the View Designer is very similar to the Query Designer.

See Also

Database Designer | Table Designer | Query and View Designer Layout