The bigER Tool - Hybrid Textual and Graphical Modeling of Entity Relationships in VS Code

Abstract

The Entity Relationship model is the de-facto standard for data modeling and has been in use for a long time already. This popularity also led to the development of various tools that support ER modeling. However, these tools are often inflexible, proprietary, constrained to specific platforms, and lack advanced features like (SQL) code generation. This paper introduces the bigER modeling tool. bigER offers various features for flexibly specifying and visualizing conceptual ER data models. Within the VS Code IDE, the tool enables hybrid and interactive modeling through a textual editor with a custom language to specify ER elements and an accompanying view to display and modify the graphical ER model. The bigER modeling tool is one of the first tools to incorporate the Language Server Protocol and to be distributed through the VS Code ecosystem. Due to its web technology-based architecture, it is platform-independent and easily extensible.