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If you need to understand the CiviCRM schema...

Published
2007-04-09 14:15
Written by
Dave Greenberg - member of the CiviCRM community - view blog guidelines
Developers who are working on integrating CiviCRM with other modules and/or developing contributions for CiviCRM need to have a good understanding of the database structure.
  • What data is stored in what tables?
  • What type and size of data is valid for a given field?
  • How are the various tables connected to each other?
This information can also be helpful when tracking down and potential bug or installation problem. Entity Relationship Diagrams or ERD's provide a graphical representation of database structure. AND...Ben Vautier (SQL Recipes) has graciously contributed (and is maintaining) a pretty comprehensive ERD for CiviCRM and it's componenents (including CiviEvent). Next time you need to wrap your head around some portion of the CiviCRM DB structure, check it out.
Filed under
CiviCRM
Architecture

Comments

Permalink
Anonymous (not verified)
2008-01-14 - 17:53

Hey, the ERDs for 1.7 were great last year, but now it's 2008. I am hoping to find something for 2.0, because I am advised by reliable sources :) that there have been major changes.
Thanks,
Ken

Permalink
Anonymous (not verified)
2011-07-23 - 12:34

I was wondering why the ERD diagrams are not up to date.

The reason why is that it is much more convenient to generate your own. Download MySQL Workbench and install it. Using MySQL Workbench you can reverse engineer your own database and create a diagram with selected tables of interest. You get an elegant, uncluttered view into CiviCRM.

You are not stuck with a giant incomprehsible nightmare.