connecting visio to a database

[ajducey]

I've been tasked with creating a database to track our network equipment and I'd like to do that using my visio drawings.  I'd like to put together something really elegant and useful.  Anyone have an example or good tutorials for using the export to database wizard?

[Visio Guy]

This might be close: Create a detailed network diagram by using external data in Visio Professional (Applies to: Microsoft Office Visio 2007).

But if you want to do two-way (Visio > db, db > Visio) you'll want to use Visio's Database Wizard, which is different than the new data features added in Visio 2007.

I think these Microsoft demos (posted by aledlund in another thread) have database-related Visio stuff:

Web based facilities management
Executive Office Management

This Visio Guy article is along those lines:
Data Refresh on Open

Let us know if this isn't enough. What exactly do you envision doing?

[ajducey]

I envision using visio add on's to export network drawing information to access? I'd really like to know how to do that. I have a very detailed set of network drawings that I'd like to be able to get detailed reports from and add information to such as equipment serial numbers, ip address info and such. Ideally I'd be able to have access add equipment to the visio drawing when new equipment is added to the network.

[aledlund]

You might take a peek at this, it has code that looks at how things are connected and then saves them out as an excel spreadsheet.

http://www.visguy.com/2009/04/08/path-analysis-in-visio/

Your request is pretty standard (three of the four items are mentioned) for network drawings. I put a couple of example videos up on youtube that demo some of this. David Parker has some of it in his book as well ('visualizing information with ms visio"). I've tried the excel path (way too limited in even a small data center), and I've also used Access. In the end I had to move to SQL and haven't looked back since. I'll check with off-line with Chris and see if maybe we can start a thread in the network area. The Word files I have been working on are pretty big (3m) and I need Chris' permission.

Al