ER Diagrams in Confluence: How to Add, Create, and Render Database Schemas
An ER diagram (entity-relationship diagram) visualizes a database schema — the tables, columns, primary and foreign keys, and the relationships between them. If your team documents data models, API contracts, or system architecture in Confluence, embedding ER diagrams directly on the page keeps the schema next to the prose instead of stranded in an external tool as a stale screenshot.
Confluence has no built-in ER diagram support, so you add it with a Marketplace app. The approach below uses Mermaid Plus for Confluence, which renders ER diagrams from plain text — meaning diagrams version, diff, and search alongside the rest of your documentation.
- How to add an ER diagram to any Confluence page
- The full Mermaid
erDiagramsyntax — entities, attributes, key types, cardinality - Three copy-paste examples (library, e-commerce, SaaS multi-tenant)
- Common mistakes and how to fix them
Entity-Relationship (ER) diagrams are the standard way to visualize database schemas. They show the tables in your database, the columns in each table, primary and foreign key constraints, and the relationships between tables -- one-to-one, one-to-many, and many-to-many. Whether you are designing a new database from scratch, documenting an existing schema for onboarding, or collaborating on a data model before writing migration scripts, an ER diagram communicates structure faster than any amount of prose.