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  exploring 2000
  glossary
  I have been using Visio
  since it first arrived on the scene, capturing the imagination of all those who saw it and
  used it. It provided a refreshingly new approach to diagramming, flowcharting and the
  like, and while the basics have never changed, it has never grown boring either, as 2.25
  million plus users will readily testify.
  Unlike those of some programs, the upgrade paths for Visio users have been rather pleasant
  ones. The product has just got better and better, not least in the pricing arena. I
  dont think there would be too many who would argue with me if I said that the add-on
  templates were too expensive initially, but thats a thing of the past, and the
  present in the shape of Visio 2000 is here with us now. I somehow suspect that V2K will
  have a lot less bugs than Y2K.
  Four distinct
  flavours
  Visio 2000 comes in four distinct flavours, each one aimed at a particular set of users.
  The Standard Edition is aimed at the business user who just wants to create
  different types of diagrams from the numerous templates that accompany it, like
  flowcharts, or room layouts and so on. Up one level is the Professional Edition.
  This is for those who want to diagram their databases or networks. Perhaps you are a
  software developer who wants to use the UML contained in the product to help you design
  your programs. You might be a web site designer who wants a tool capable of automatically
  mapping web sites, or you might wish to create data flow diagrams and then use hyperlinks
  to navigate between the process details on each page. You also get all the business
  templates that ship in Standard Edition. In fact, if you think that each edition is the
  same as the ones below it with extras, thats how it works.
  Next up is the Technical Edition aimed at those who are into technical drawing,
  although if you arent a CAD expert dont worry, because creating technical
  drawings and diagrams doesnt require advanced CAD knowledge thanks to Visios
  templates with over 4,000 shapes for you to employ. If you are a CAD expert youll be
  delighted to know that the Technical Edition both reads and writes to DWG and DGN files. A
  neat feature is the ability to bring in an existing DWG drawing as a background, and then
  snap the correct shapes from Visios templates so that they match the ones on the
  document.
  If you are an electrical bod you neednt feel left out as the Technical Edition has
  templates that will let you create wiring diagrams until you are fed up with doing so.
  Similarly youll not have a great deal of trouble sorting out your
  telecommunications, lighting, or indeed any other sort of electronic plan you can think
  of. Need to design the layout for your new manufacturing plant? No problem. Is Ductwork
  your thing? Go on, you can tell us, youre among friends, especially at Visio who
  provide you with a set of shapes that let you create anything from single or double-line
  HVAC control system layouts to basic ductwork. Floor plans, site plans, PFDs, P&IDs,
  facilities plans linked to assets databases? If its technical and you want to draw
  it, or diagram it, or flowchart it and more, Visio Technical Edition can manage it.
  That all sounds wonderful, and youd be forgiven for thinking that the road ended
  there, but it doesnt. Visio Enterprise Edition rounds out the bunch, and it
  can do everything the others can, and a whole load more.
  Enterprise Edition
  In fact one of the more tedious things you might have to do is produce a diagram of your
  network infrastructure. While youve obviously been able to create network diagrams
  using the templates included with the Professional and Technical Editions, the Enterprise
  Edition not only lets you do that, but also offers to take the chore out of that task by
  doing the whole thing for you. All you have to do is point the network recognition
  technology at your network, tell Visio where to start, and in no time at all youll
  be armpit-deep in network diagrams. Visio Enterprise uses SNMP (and Ping as well, if
  necessary) to discover the physical devices as well as the topology of your network, and
  then you decide just how you want that information presented to you, generally by
  following a simple series of guided steps in one Wizard or another.
  I talked earlier about Visios accurate representation of items, and that is just as
  apparent now as it was back then. Visio Enterprise has the 18,000+ shapes in the Visio
  Network Equipment library to call upon, and those shapes have been designed in conjunction
  with hardware manufacturers around the world giving you port-level detail. You will be
  able to just glance at a diagram and have no difficulty whatsoever recognising the machine
  being looked at, for example.
  You can also use any AutoCAD drawings and office designs youve already done to help
  with your network layout, by utilising Visio Enterprises DWG file conversion
  capability along with the Office Layout shapes. Talking of Office, Visio integrates rather
  well with Microsofts offering, and thats a trend set to continue for the
  foreseeable future as Microsoft likes the software so much, it bought the company. Expect
  even better integration within the Microsoft product range, and I can almost see network
  administrators licking their lips in anticipation of what the Microsoft/Visio combination
  will be able to come up with in the networking arena. I wouldnt be at all surprised
  to see a set of small applets based on the Visio drawing engine that can be used in a
  stand-alone mode aimed at items like Active Directory and network layouts.
  Installation
  Installing Visio Enterprise 2000 was an absolute doddle, and it worked right out of the
  box on my Windows 2000 systems too. It takes a while to install if you go for the whole
  lot, and you should then allow a moment or two to install the contents of the separate
  Visio Network Equipment (VNE) CD as there are a lot of shapes to get through if you decide
  to go for the complete install option. As Visio uses the new Windows Installer technology,
  anything you dont want to put on straight away can be easily brought in later.
  Visio integrates well with Microsoft Office 2000. You can edit Visio drawings from within
  the Microsoft apps of course, but the latest version goes a step further enabling you to
  create drawings that when embedded in a PowerPoint presentation, will automatically adopt
  the colour scheme in use. You also get full VBA 6.0 within Visio 2000, a feature it
  currently shares only with Microsoft Office 2000, further indication, were any needed, of
  the strong ties that existed between the two companies prior to the Microsoft purchase.
  There is also a degree of integration with Internet Explorer 5.0 as Visio 2000 enables you
  to convert existing drawings into the Vector Markup Language (VML) format. That gives
  people the ability to navigate through your drawings from the comfort of their own work
  areas, using the web. There are over 18,000 shapes on the VNE CD each designed to the
  highest quality. Youll have no trouble identifying equipment recognised by Visio
  when you run the Auto-Discovery and Layout feature, and then map the discovered items to
  their respective library shapes. If youre wondering how you can keep up-to-date with
  new system releases, and thus new AutoShapes to represent them, Visio provides a
  subscription service to the VNE, and thatll net you an average 2,000 new shapes each
  year apparently.
  Improvements & new features
  Improvements in the network discovery technology for Visio 2000 mean that you can now get
  down to the port level in your network environment, and youll find that you can now
  diagram Cisco VLAN and Spanning Tree environments after the updated AutoDiscovery feature
  has captured the requisite data. Theres also supposed to be a Real-Time Network
  Statistics add-on for Visio Enterprise, but I hadnt seen that at the time of
  writing. It should however have shipped by the time you read this. On the directory
  services front, the latest Enterprise version improves on what went before, and provides a
  whole heap more. You can now work pretty intimately with both Microsoft Active Directory
  (AD) and Novell Directory Services (NDS) you can see why Microsoft doesnt
  include its name as part of the acronym for Active Directory, cant you!
  Import filtering has been improved, and you can use the new Directory Navigator window to
  see your directory layouts in a familiar tree-like structure, while at the same time
  viewing your user groups, for example, in another familiar view (that of the
  Organisational Chart). As Visio also supports LDIF, this gives you the capability to
  create directory service diagrams that you can then export in a format that can be
  implemented by the directory service for which you did the design.
  One thing you will notice in the 2000 version of Visio, apart from the fact that
  everything seems much faster and a lot easier to use, is that it has been equipped with
  several new windows that leap out from the sides of the drawing area when you hover the
  mouse over them. Aside from the Directory Navigator window mentioned earlier, the Pan
  & Zoom View Window will be especially appreciated, as it encapsulates an entire
  diagram within its confines. You simply pan around in that until you find the bit you
  want, then drag a zoom area in the window, and watch as the main drawing area changes to
  reflect the items you selected.
  Further windows include a Document Explorer window so that you can see everything
  associated with the current drawing, a Size & Position window that lets you alter the
  size and position characteristics for any shape, and finally a Custom window that lets you
  get at any custom properties you might have created for the current shape. Other features
  include the ability to reverse engineer existing code (your own, naturally) into Unified
  Modelling Language (UML). Code can come from Microsofts trio of programming
  languages: Visual Basic, Visual C++, and new for this version, Visual J++. You can also go
  the other way and generate code for those languages that you initially developed using UML
  in Visio.
  As you might expect, the ability to create database models, Entity Relationship (ER)
  models and so on within Visio, continues within this latest version. Now, however, where
  you once had to turn to VisualModeler for Object Role Model (ORM) capability, and then
  import the result into Visio, this is now available from within. Legacy models will still
  work, there naturally being the ability to import older ORM models as well as create new
  ones.
  Praise indeed
  On the 19th of September, in a review of Venice (the beta codename for Visio
  Enterprise 2000), I said the following: "Put simply, if Word and Excel are your knife
  and fork, Visio has just become the spoon that stirs a whole bundle of elements together,
  and comes up with an excellent result at the end of the day. Whether your thing is
  drawing, or charting, whether you be database designer or software developer, or whether
  youre just looking for a drop-dead good flow-chart program, Visio provides you with
  all you need and more." I stand by that even more now, and Microsoft obviously
  believed that it really did need to add Visio to its table set. It was right, and I think
  youll find after close examination that youll like the sort of meals you will
  be able to eat using Visio, even if you just have