Customising labels in outputs

[dsmdavid]

I'm not sure if this is possible already or not, I just haven't found a way of doing it.

I think it would be useful to be able to customise the labels created in the diagrams. Sometimes the names may be too long and clutter the diagram, and the relationships do not show a concept, but rather the name of the columns checked.

e.g. original

erDiagram
 
  "MODEL.DBT_RESTO.DIM_PRIZE" {
    varchar prize_key
    nvarchar prize_name
    int prize_order
  }
  "MODEL.DBT_RESTO.FACT_RESULT" {
    varchar fact_result_key
    varchar box_key
    varchar prize_key
    date date_key
    int no_of_won
    float prize_value
    float prize_paid
    int is_prize_taken
  }
  "MODEL.DBT_RESTO.DIM_PRIZE" ||--o{ "MODEL.DBT_RESTO.FACT_RESULT": prize_key

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with modified labels:

erDiagram
 
  "MODEL.DBT_RESTO.DIM_PRIZE"["dim_prize"] {
    varchar prize_key
    nvarchar prize_name
    int prize_order
  }
  "MODEL.DBT_RESTO.FACT_RESULT"["fct_result"] {
    varchar fact_result_key
    varchar box_key
    varchar prize_key
    date date_key
    int no_of_won
    float prize_value
    float prize_paid
    int is_prize_taken
  }
  "MODEL.DBT_RESTO.DIM_PRIZE" ||--o{ "MODEL.DBT_RESTO.FACT_RESULT": "is part of"

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In my mind this could be derived from meta properties. I'm not sure how this works for outputs other than mermaid.

[datnguye]

Thanks @dsmdavid for the good discussion here!

Firstly to confirm, no, this ability is not yet available, instead, it's using the column name to label the connector currently.

And for the solution to support the customized label of the connector, the meta config might be the way even when I am not fully convinced since it means more works to do.

Here are some of my observations / suggestions:

• ⚠️ There is a reason to use column name in the connector label, instead of, something meaningful e.g. is part of: In case that we have multiple connectors between 2 entities, it feels lost to know which A's fields connecting to which B's field. Or in case that A has single connector to B and A has the self-connector.
• 💡 We might leverage the existing meta. relationship_type and do the auto-labelling with set of pre-built options, given the sample command as dbterd run --connector-label <option>:
  • default: Using column names as implemented
  • custom-xxx: xxx can be a pre-built dict containing the mapping as follow:
    • One-to-Many (1n): "has many", "contains", "includes", "consists of", "owns"
    • Zero-to-Many (0n): "may have", "can include", "might contain", "optionally has", "could consist of"
    • Many-to-Many (nn): "associated with", "linked to", "related to", "connected to", "paired with"
    • One-to-One (11): "is linked to", "corresponds to", "matches", "is paired with", "is associated with"
    • Many-to-One (n1): "belongs to", "is part of", "is included in", "is owned by", "is contained in"
  • If we need customize xxx, set its dict to the env var

👀 Other suggestion?

We can start to build it for Mermaid first, and iterate to add for all in general later 👍

Let me know what you think! You'll be more then welcome to take action and raise PR 🙌

Cheers!