Print OR Export database diagram to PDF/PNG

Yes, there is plan to work on "Print Schema layout", but at this stage we cannot provide timeline on this.

We are currently working on completing features required to Design the database like in last release we released "Index with included column options", "Undo/Redo" , "Support for large databases" etc. 

For next release, we focusing on MySQL reverse engineering and Reverse Engineering on top of existing project.

Also, there is another ticket about print where one of the users provided interim solution (in comments) , take a look it might work for you for time being: https://support.sqldbm.com/communities/1/topics/37-print-or-export-database-diagram-to-pdfpng

This is a wonderful product but I actually found it while searching for something that would print out a nice diagram of the database(s) I'm trying to learn.  It seems silly that there are no products where you can just upload the table structures with pk/fk and show the tables and relationships in a nice format that can be printed out and hung on the wall. This is a quick, simple entry into a slightly different market once you add the printing capability.  The payoff could be big for such a small piece.  Perhaps you could bump up the priority?

Agree, this feature is important and useful. We had internal discussion and are thinking to bump its priority and start working on it soon. Keep you posted.

Thanks for using SqlDBM and providing suggestion.

I have spent some time reviewing a number of tools to manage database diagrams.  From a functional perspective SqlDBM is fantastic EXCEPT for 2 features:

1) You can't actually output the diagrams - to be honest that's hopeless

2) The table relationships are not labelled so you can not easily tell which columns are forming the relationships

Whilst Sergio's suggestion sort of works (you need to fiddle the margins depending on the size of the diagram) we are trying to diagram a database with +/- 300 tables that are divided in to 15-20 diagrams so copy & paste of HTML is not really a solution.

I appreciate printing is on you backlog, but how long is the backlog?  If it is really or in the 'never never' list then I will move on to one of your competitors.

Dear User,

Thank you for using SqlDBM and glad you liked it, also very much appreciate your analysis.

We agree with you that "Print" is very important functionality and must be available in any tool.

So far, we have been focusing on straightening out some key Database modelling features like Undo functionality, improving performance to have larger databases, types of indexes support etc.

Also, we are planning soon to have some kind of Road Map page on the website, so that it is transparent to all our users what we working on and what is coming next. 

Since Road Map page is not out yet, I will take this opportunity to list next few big features that are on horizon:

1) Currently we working on MySql Reverse Engineering, as well as better way to Reverse Engineering using DDL Script. One of the reasons to work on Reverse Engineering is a lot of users donated us money at https://sqldbm.com/en/Pricing/  and bumped priority for  Reverse Engineering improvements. 
I would like to take this opportunity to thank all users who donated money for their input into the project, which helped us to  hire additional developer, who is working on Reverse Engineering. 
 

2) Next: Work on moving from "Beta SqlDBM" to "SqlDBM". Many companies/users have mentioned that since we are in Beta, they want to wait until we have release version. Hence, that is important step for us.

3) Next: Print. As mentioned earlier we realize that it is important to have diagram in printable format. 

I hope that I have answered your question. Please feel free to contact us in case you have more questions.

Thanks
Team - SqlDBM

Support,

Thanks for that response, so in terms of time does that mean printing is 3 weeks away, 3 months away or further out?

Cheers

John

Dear User,

Based on current backlog (as I mentioned above) and size of tickets, for now it seems like Print will be done between 2 to 3 months.

Thanks
Team - SqlDBM

Dear Support,
The last comment says 2 to 3 months, and that comments was 2 months back. Any further update on this feature? I would like to see that in action before deciding to stay with this tool.

Thanks

Mubin

Dear Mubin,

  Thank you for using SqlDBM.

We recently launched a Release Version which includes different type Subscription plans. Currently, we are supporting lots of user requests, helping users to subscribe with paid plans.

We do understand that Print is important and as we have mentioned earlier, Print is in the immediate pipeline but we cannot promise on the timeline of its delivery. 

It is absolutely your call to stick with SqlDBM or not, but I would like to inform (in case you missed), we have offered great launch discount for all our users, which is limited time offer and it allows users to lock down the price forever.

Thanks,

Team - SqlDBM

Team SqlDBM,

The price isn't really relevant if fundamentally the product doesn't have the functionality that a customer, or prospective customer sees as critical.  This issue is 7 months old and there are 6 related issues around diagram output, so it is not like I am alone on this requirement.

In response you have gone form a timeline of '2-3 months' to now not being able to specify a delivery date so really I have no idea when, if ever I would be able to output a diagram.  I don't see value even with a discounted price to be honest.

Its a shame, fundamentally I like the product but not being able to output a diagram is show stopper.

Good luck, I hope you are successful with your product.

Cheers

John

This sort of response from SqlDBM also makes me wonder if it's under active development. Probably not if those are the timelines. A shame.

I agree. This feature is required for this tool to be of use to me, and I'm reluctant to spend company funds on a subscription until I can see that it has been implemented in a useful way.

There also needs to be better routing of the connecting lines; currently they are a mess on complicated diagrams.

At the moment, in order to print this diagram I need to take screenshots, paste them into paint or somesuch to piece it back together, and THEN save to PDF. This is too time consuming so at the moment I can't really distribute the schemas I make here to other members of my team. The 'share' is not quite up to par either - the 'read only' view is the same as the editing view so there is too much going on on-screen for it to be user-friendly enough for our reporting analysts.

Has this been added already, is it really that hard of a thing to do?

My company wants to use this tool but if it does not have how to export will not be useful.

What was said above. Nice system but without a print/export it is useless.

Is there no indication at all of when even a basic export/print feature might be added? This has been requested for over a year now and your updates are poor.

Dear User,

Thanks for using SqlDBM.

We agree Print functionality is very important and that is why it is on top of our priority list and we are working towards it.

After investigation we figured, in order to do it correctly, it would require big code refactoring.

But this refactoring would also give us other UI benefits as well, such as Auto Layouts , crow foot notation etc.

Hope it helps.

Again thank you being valuable user of SqlDBM

I use this workaround with the library https://html2canvas.hertzen.com/ 

Open a javascript console and paste this code. This will open a new tab with the image you can save.

fetch('https://html2canvas.hertzen.com/dist/html2canvas.min.js')
   .then(response => response.text())
   .then(text => eval(text))
   .then(() => {
           var pspace = document.getElementsByClassName('printSpace')[0]
           var w = pspace.width.baseVal.value;
           var h = pspace.height.baseVal.value;
           html2canvas(document.getElementsByTagName('board-diagramcontainer')[0], {width: w, height: h}).then(canvas => {
           var newTab = window.open();
        newTab.document.body.innerHTML = '<img src="'+ canvas.toDataURL() +'">';
    });
});

Of course, use this code under your responsibility. I only tested with chrome.

We are looking at paying for SQLDBM at our company, but with no print functionality, this service is basically useless to us. We are also very discouraged from paying for this product after seeing how often this basic functionality has been pushed back. 

Seems like a basic thing that is taking way too long. 

Just found out, that there is no way to print complex diagrams larger than a screen size.

Perfect would be a poster print option (via multipage PDF or TIFF). I have now a quite large diagram and it's not easy to show the diagram as a whole big picture for final presentation.

Has there been any progress about this topic since the last 7 months?

A large TIFF or PDF with a single picture/page would work the beginning, too. Then I could use other poster print software.

The only viable option I can use so far, is to create a database diagram in SSMS, after i have exported the SQLDBM-diagram as SQL-Code and import the code in a test database. But I loose all the colors, text boxes, diagram layout... . But this option only works for Microsoft databases and if the diagram is already complete and exportable (yes, it happens sometimes, that draft diagrams generate not get the right SQL-Code, because of some missing PK FK,..... Thats' why it's a draft and need to be discussed and checked in a meeting with a big picture print out.)

Is there any update as to when we are likely to see the Print/Export feature?

I agree with a lot of users here. Without print functionality, I have just wasted my time with this product. It is not even a function I can pay for. Really disappointed I spent time on this at all. 

Really need the export functionality for PDF if I'm going to use this software.

I stopped using this software something like 9 months ago. It's a cool concept but without such basic functionality it's not a 'serious' tool I can use at my work.

If they ever finish building the core functionality I'll use it, paying for it isn't an issue.

bump!!! lol

Dear users,

I know this is very important feature for many of us.

At this stage I can tell you only that we have it in the plan for this year.

Actually it's currently second feature in priority list.

It was very important for us to release Snowflake support first.

Now we are working on adding support for PostgreSQL - a lot of users are asking for it as well.

At the same time work on Print/Export has been started! But it takes more time that we all want. :( 

Next in the pipeline after PostgreSQL is print/export feature. 

Thank you for your patience!

Have a great day,

Eugene

Who used this the free xlsx to pdf converter https://onlineconvertfree.com/convert-format/xlsx-to-pdf/ ?

I just stumbled upon SqlDBM and am impressed. I'm hoping this product is a fit for my team. The first thing I noticed though was this issue. Collaboration and sharing is really important and we need to be able to print out the model in at least some rudimentary manner.

My team currently use erwin, which is like the elder statesman of data modeling BUT it's horrendous in terms of licensing, platform constraints, AND this same issue. You can't really share the model. I'm hoping your team has an incremental delivery plan in place for this. Meaning, a sqlDBM comment above said your planned refactoring could/would enable auto-layout and other notations such It would be needed for us to switch. However, in my opinion you should release a minimally-viable feature for printing without encumbering the release with a lot of other stuff that nobody is clamoring for here. Sooner is better.

Thanks.

This website is great, but I agree with everyone else that the system is useless without the ability to print & export diagrams to PDF or image file. I would love to continue using SqlDBM, but if this feature is not added I will have to find another service. As others already have suggested a "bare-minimum-release" of the print/export feature would be enough to keep me invested in the system. 

I noticed that the feature was recently taken off the road map. Are there any update of what happened or where it is in the pipeline? Do you have any idea about when you might be able to release the feature?

Thanks,

Have a great day.

Hello, any news on the matter ? Do you know already what behavior exactly this feature is gonna have? Like are the relationships going to be displayed and the columns involved highlighted?

Thank you in advance and keep up the good work the tool is awesome

When will this feature be made available, we've been asking for more than 1 year now?

I love everything about SqlDBM except the lack of export, which is a requirement for me. I need to look elsewhere if this feature isn't available in the near term. Any hint about when you expect export to be available?

I would be happy if I could just export to draw.io. I just need a vector image to include in docs.

I have revisited this feature request after some time, hoping that there would be some news of its forthcoming release, but there is none.  IMO this is more important than an on-boarding video which is currently on the road-map.  You need to listen to your customers, it is probably one of the most requested features.

Thanks.

An update was provided a year ago that stated the print function would be available within 3 months - yet the function is still absent.

Is there an update regarding when the tool will have the ability to save models to pdf, or other formats? This is a crucial feature.

We are working on it, and it seems like we should be delivering that feature in November.

Thanks for your patience,

Team - SqlDBM

I sure hope you can deliver the much needed printing feature ASAP.  Its a shame such a good product lacks such an important feature. 

We really need this feature as well. Glad to read that you are working on it. Hopefully we can use it soon.

Any update on when this feature is scheduled to be deployed and made available to users?

Dear Users.

Long awaited feature of ability to Export Diagram in printable format in SqlDBM is finally here. With this feature you can improve your productivity as you develop and model your Data Warehouse.

Accessing “Export Diagram” is very straight forward. Just click on top right button and then click download icon.

Thank you for your patience.

Not sure why this is so difficult to implement. Could you not please allow us to choose various exporting file types such as PNG, JPG, PDF, etc.? Additionally, we should be able to easily choose a color template or layout. Shouldn't be hard to change the background image of the canvas to let's say "grey" and connecting lines to "blue" and tables to another color, etc. These should be very simple to implement, but incredibly helpful for us. Please consider making these additions. You let us choose a template in the beginning, why can't it give us the option to change again? In fact, i'm on the dark template and I thought when I exported it, it would look the same, but then my background turned white and messed it all up. Very hard to see the lines at a distance. 

I don't get this.  There has been widespread demand/pressure for this functionality, which seems really basic in that what is the point of defining the diagrams if you can't output them anywhere?

Now that it is an option to output them, you can't see the results without first subscribing and when you do ehall's comment would suggest the results are less than ideal.

So, I want to pay for your product, but will only do so if I can do something as basic as output the diagrams but I don't know how good that output is until I pay.  I have sent a private message on this topic as well but haven't had a response.

Dear User,

We understand your concern.

This is just our first version out, and we definitely want to do something for free users to try out. It may be coming in upcoming releases depending on priorities/resources and roadmap.

FYI: Dear John: We did reply to your ticket, you might have missed that. 

Thank you for sharing your thoughts,

Team - SqlDBM

Mmmm... Not to be rude but given the time it has taken to get here that isn't very reassuring.

Found the reply thanks, interestingly I didn't get an email like I do for every response on this thread.

Thank you for the reply. FYI I am a paid user. We should definitely be able to try it out. As for the priorities of implementing a simple feature like this compared to other roadmap priorities, it may be worth getting a dev to knock this out quickly or just hiring a intermediate/junior dev contractor to do this quickly. it really should not be hard to implement but offer significant value to your customers. I am a product manager myself, and this would be a no brainer to prioritize on the roadmap. Exporting images of schemas is critical for executive meetings for architects and DBAs to present to the teams. Generating reports and images is very helpful. Especially exporting the notes. For instance, Dataedo has a great tool to turn your schemas into excellent documentation for teams. Just a thought to present as a customer for your team. 

It doesn't work well for me, it helped to reduce zoom to 10% in sqldbm and minimal in chrome but still the export doesnt feature all my tables well. 
Will post workaround if i find one. 

If Export image is limited, is there a "VIEWER" option in the web for users who are not licensed? Typically in case modeling tools, we only want the data modelers to have access to the tool functionality, but want users to be able to see models that they are ready to "publish". This way they understand the structures they are writing queries against. 

Yes, you can add user as read-only collaborator to your project,

That's cool. Are these Collaborators part of pricing? Do they need licenses? we obviously know all the modelers need licenses. 

These are end users who need to see the models. We might even really know them personally, other than they work for the same company. So a "viewer" of models at some URL is very powerful.

I would like to generate reports from SQLDBM such as listing the tables and its parent/children and in which diagram/subject area are they located. It would be really helpful to get a HTML or an excel report.

Hi there, thanks for reaching out and for this idea. Although we don't support everything you mentioned, we do offer our Database Documentation feature - which may assist in this. Please check it out here: https://intercom.help/SqlDBMhelpcenter/en/articles/4873008-database-documentation

Thanks for the quick response.  If some of these features cannot be supported, can you provide features to select what properties I would like to export to an Excel file? Eg. the subject area/diagram name of a table. These are basic info that anyone would like to have. Reports are really important for a data modeling tool to be successful. 

Hi Partha, 

Apologies for being unclear here. While we do not currently support choosing your own features, we do have it on our roadmap to expand the documentation/glossary feature. So it’s not that we cannot support - only that we do not currently support that. I’ll pass your suggestions along to our Product team. Thank you.

I'm a newly paying user. Has print capability ever been implemented? A lot of this thread is over 3 years old, and wasn't as of then. 

Hello, yes - we now have an export to png or svg option. Please see the instructions here on how to access this: https://intercom.help/SqlDBMhelpcenter/en/articles/4808762-export-to-png-and-svgThanks!

These exports are almost unusable and definitely not the quality I need for showing models to end users and business folks.  Can we just get plain black and white diagrams without all the theme mess?

Hello, thank you for this comment. We do have our Confluence integration which can showcase a single diagram or subject area, or project, to all users on your team (through Confluence).  You can read more about that here: https://intercom.help/SqlDBMhelpcenter/en/articles/6122227-confluence-integration-standard-enterprise

We also allow you to change the theme of SqlDBM - we have the light theme and the dark theme. If you prefer a white background, you can change this by clicking the SqlDBM logo in the top left corner, then click "Light Theme". This will then allow you to export to png with the light background.