20 - Integrating Data with a Visio Solution

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If you're developing a solution that combines Microsoft Visio drawings with another source of data, such as a database, you'll be interested in the ways you can associate data with shapes and pages. Using custom properties and user-defined ShapeSheet cells, you can associate data with a shape; using a unique ID provides a way to establish a persistent link between a shape and external data associated with it. In addition, you can store data for documents, pages, masters, shortcuts, shapes, and text using a variety of different Visio properties.

This chapter also provides two code samples for extracting data from a drawing and creating a drawing from external data, two of the most common ways solution developers work with Visio and data from other applications. The two samples introduce some general approaches for integrating data with a Visio solution and are intended to give you a sense of the range of possible solutions you might create.