A context view is a saved, focused view of your schema that shows only a subset of entities and the relationships between them. It is Schemity’s answer to the biggest problem with large ERDs: one giant canvas nobody can read. “Context Views” is the actual feature name in the app.

Why is one big ERD diagram a problem?

A real application might have eighty entities. Drawn all at once on the main diagram, the ERD is a wall of boxes and crossing lines. Context views solve this: one underlying schema, many focused views into it.

How do context views work?

You keep a single set of entities - the ERD single source of truth - and create context views on top. A billing view might show invoices, line_items, payments, and the users they belong to, hiding the other seventy entities entirely.

Every view points at the same entities, so editing an entity’s fields in the main diagram updates it everywhere. What a context view stores on its own is the presentation: which entities it includes, their positions, their connector routing (waypoints), and its own legends. There is no second copy of the schema to keep in sync.

How do I create a context view?

  1. Open the Context Views panel and choose Add context view.
  2. Give it a Name (and color) for the area it covers, for example billing or auth.
  3. Add the entities relevant to that context and arrange them for that view.

Can I add a description to a context view?

Yes. A context view can carry a description written in markdown. When a view has one, its row in the Context Views list shows a file icon button; clicking it opens a modal that renders the markdown-formatted description.

Use it to state what the view is for - the bounded context it covers, who its audience is, what “done” looks like for that slice of the schema - so a teammate opening the workspace understands each view without asking. Legends and entities support markdown descriptions the same way.

Why do context views fit domain-driven design?

Context views map naturally onto a bounded context ERD. Each view is one slice of the domain, so the diagram mirrors how your team actually reasons about the system. That makes Schemity a strong fit for domain-driven design database schema work.

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Annotate and group your diagram with Legends & Annotations.