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Entity Relationship Diagram

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Entity Relationship (ER) diagrams document database structures and the relationships between tables. Mermaid Studio provides full language support for designing and maintaining your data models.

Syntax highlighting integrates directly with IntelliJ’s color scheme system, so diagram colors always match your editor theme.

ER diagram syntax highlighting in Armada Dark theme

ER diagrams have comprehensive IDE support:

  • Syntax highlighting - Distinct colors for entities, attributes, and relationships
  • Code completion - Suggestions for relationship types, attribute modifiers, and entity references
  • Refactoring - Rename entities and update all references
  • Find usages - See where entities are referenced in relationships
  • Code Vision - Inline hints showing relationship counts
  • Color provider - Preview and pick colors for styling
  • Navigation bar - Quick access to entities in large schemas
  • Code folding - Collapse entity definitions
  • Formatting - Auto-format your diagram code
  • Inspections - Detect undefined entities and invalid relationships
  • Brace matching - Navigate entity definition boundaries
  • Structure view - Hierarchical overview of entities and relationships
  • Intentions - Quick fixes for common issues

Relationship cardinality:

  • || - Exactly one
  • o| - Zero or one
  • }| - One or more
  • o{ - Zero or more

Common patterns:

  • ||--o{ - One to many (optional)
  • ||--|{ - One to many (required)
  • }o--o{ - Many to many

Entity attributes:

erDiagram
USER {
int id PK
string email UK
int role_id FK
string name
}

Attribute modifiers: PK (primary key), FK (foreign key), UK (unique key)

For the complete syntax reference, see the Mermaid.js ER Diagram documentation.