Microsoft introduced the current data-linking feature in the Professional edition of Visio Professional 2007. This feature is better than the database add-on that has been around since Visio 4 because it is has greater importing capabilities and is part of the core product, and it has its own API. This provides the Visio user with a simple method of surfacing data from a variety of data sources, and it gives the power user or developer the ability to create productivity enhancements in code.

Once data is imported into Visio, the rows of data can be linked to shapes and then displayed visually, or they can automatically create hyperlinks. Moreover, if the data is edited outside of Visio, then the data in the Visio shapes can be refreshed so that the shapes reflect the updated data. This can be done in the Visio client, but some data sources can also refresh the data in Visio documents that are displayed in SharePoint web pages.

In this way, Visio...