Entity Relationship Diagrams

What are Entity Relationship Diagrams?

Mermaid’s Entity Relationship Diagrams (ERDs) help you visualize database structures and relationships. For analytics engineers, they’re essential for documenting data models, table relationships, and database schemas. ERDs show how different entities (tables) in your database relate to each other, including their attributes and the nature of their relationships.

Creating Your First ERD

Launch DinoAI: From Code IDE, access DinoAI to start creating diagrams.
Use a Simple Prompt: Tell DinoAI what kind of ERD you want to create. For example:

- "Create a mermaid  ERD diagram showing the relationships between my customer, order, and product tables"

- "Generate a mermaid ERD for my e-commerce data model with proper cardinality notation"

- "Build a mermaid ERD diagram for my dbt models showing table relationships and key columns"

Get Your Diagram: DinoAI will generate a complete .mmd file with proper Mermaid syntax.
Preview Your Work: Click the eye icon (👁️) to preview your diagram in real-time as you edit.
Iterate and Refine: Modify the generated .mmd file directly, or ask DinoAI to make specific changes.

Example

Reusable ERD prompts for you and your teamYou can create custom, standardized .dinoprompts for Mermaid’s ERDiagrams that ensure consistency across your data team. See step-by-step guide.

Diagram Syntax Guide

Basic Entity Definition

Cardinality Notation

Show relationships between entities using crow’s foot notation:

||--|| : Exactly one to exactly one
||--o{ : One to many (zero or more)
||--|{ : One to many (one or more)
}o--o{ : Many to many

Relationship Types

Solid lines (—): Identifying relationship
Dotted lines (..): Non-identifying relationship

Best Practices

Use clear, descriptive entity names
Show only relevant attributes
Include key relationships
Use consistent naming conventions
Document primary and foreign keys
Group related entities together

Additional ResourcesFor more syntax options and advanced features, visit the official Mermaid documentation

​What are Entity Relationship Diagrams?

​Creating Your First ERD

​Example

​Diagram Syntax Guide

​Basic Entity Definition

​Cardinality Notation

​Relationship Types

What are Entity Relationship Diagrams?

Creating Your First ERD

Example

Diagram Syntax Guide

Basic Entity Definition

Cardinality Notation

Relationship Types