During the database design phase important decisions are made — such as which tables to use for representing certain types of data.
But what happens when your database’s relational data model is complete?
The next step is to implement your model.
Being able to quickly implement a new database model quickly is a critical step in the database development process. Quick model implementation allows you to start testing earlier and find areas for improvement.
But how do you actually implement your model? And better yet — test it for efficiency?
SeeQR takes care of database model implementation and testing. It allows you to quickly spin up a brand new PostgreSQL database and implement your model.
You don’t even need to write a query.
After creating your tables, columns, and constraints, you can generate dummy data for your tables — all with the click of a button.
Below, we’ll go over 3 ways to boost your early-stage database planning efficiency:
Expedite database model implementation with an entity relationship design tool
Entity relationship (ER) design tools allow you to quickly visualize your database model. Why is that important?
ER diagrams give you a better understanding of your overall database structure. By having a visual model, you’ll be able to easily see how your tables, columns, and constraints relate to each other.
Creating an ER model is considered a best practice before database model implementation. Having an ER model will help you analyze your data requirements, and give you an opportunity to make changes to your model before you implement it.
But what if creating an ER model and implementing it could be done in the same step? SeeQR does just that.
SeeQR’s ER modeling tool implements your database while you create your ER diagram. This effectively completes two steps at once — so you’ll have more time for query testing (or surfing the web, which is what we usually do).
After adding your tables and columns, each column has a drop down menu where you can set its data type and constraints — such as primary key, foreign key, and unique.
When your database implementation is complete, what do you do next? SeeQR makes it easy to test schema models against each other, which we’ll explain below.
Compare schema models by running query tests
There is not really any best or worst way to set up your relational database’s schema models. For every model, there are pros and cons, which usually exhibit themselves in the way of performance.
SeeQR makes it simple to test schema models against each other. Using the database copy tool, you can copy an existing database model, make modifications, and then test your two models against each other.
In the queries view, select a database and input a query that you want to test. The label and group fields let you save your queries for identification in query comparisons.
Comparing queries is simple, and is also done visually. Just check the box next to a saved query to add it to a comparison graph. The graph is displayed as a bar chart, and a table below the chart will display information about each query.
Query execution and query comparison is done seamlessly in SeeQR — switching between them is done with the click of a button.
After executing a query, the query’s planning time, execution time, and results will be displayed below the SQL input field.
Having the planning and execution times are great, but what if you want to get an intricate look into exactly how your query is being executed?
Understand how your SQL engine is executing a query
SeeQR gives you an inside view of your queries’ execution plan. After testing a query, toggle the ‘EXECUTION PLAN’ switch to view a tree view of your queries’ execution plan.
Clicking on a node in the execution plan tree will give you additional details regarding the action.
SeeQR also lets you visually monitor individual query actions. By setting the warning threshold, an individual step will turn red if its duration exceeds a certain percent of the overall execution time.
Wrap-up
Entity relationship design tools are not a new thing. However, most of them don’t allow you to modify your database model and test it at the same time.
SeeQR helps guide you through optimizing your relational database’s model and queries.
Excited yet? Download SeeQR from our website.
If you find SeeQR useful and want to support our team, give us a star on our GitHub repo.
