Entity Relationship Notations

When generating an entity relationship data model, the Reverse Engineering tool looks for tables and views in the project. The entity relationship model contains an entity type for each AOT table in the project and attributes for each table’s fields. Figure 4 shows an Entity Relationship Diagram (ERD) with theCustTableInventTable (Inventory Items), SalesTable (Sales Order Header), and SalesLine (Sales Order Line) tables. To simplify the diagram, some attributes have been removed. (Customers),

Figure 4. ERD using IDEF1X notation

Fields in Dynamics AX are generated as entity relationship columns. Columns can be foreign key (FK), alternate key (AK), inversion entry (IE), and optional (O). A foreign key column is used to identify a record in another table, an alternate key uniquely identifies a record in the current table, an inversion entry identifies zero or more records in the current table (these are typical of the fields in nonunique indexes), and optional columns don’t require a value.

Relationships in Dynamics AX are generated as entity relationships. The EntityRelationshipRole property of the relationship in Dynamics AX is used as the foreign key role name of the relation in the entity relationship data model.