About PowerDesigner and the PowerDesigner plug-in
About PowerDesigner
PowerDesigner is a data modeling tool that supports several
types of models and many programming languages. The following modules
are available for data modeling in PowerDesigner:
- Conceptual
Data Model (CDM) to model the overall logical structure of a data
application, independent of any software or data storage structure
considerations - Physical Data Model (PDM) to model the overall physical
structure of a database, taking into account DBMS software or data
storage structure considerations - Object Oriented Model (OOM) to model a software
system using the Unified Modeling Language (UML) notation, which
can then be generated as objects in a supported object-oriented
language such as Java or PowerScript - Business Process Model (BPM) to model the means
by which one or more processes are accomplished in operating business
practices - Free Model (FEM) to create any kind of chart diagram,
in a context-free environment
About the PowerDesigner plug-in
PowerBuilder includes a plug-in that provides the class diagram
functionality of the PowerDesigner OOM directly inside the PowerBuilder
development environment.
When the PowerDesigner plug-in is enabled, you can link a
PowerBuilder target with a UML class diagram through a process called
reverse-engineering. You can make modifications and adjustments
to the class diagram and immediately generate those changes back
to the objects in the PowerBuilder target library.
With the plug-in, you can also create a UML class diagram
from scratch (or open an existing OOM file) and generate a PowerBuilder
target using PowerDesigner menus in the PowerBuilder development
environment. The plug-in facilitates synchronization between a class
diagram and the PowerBuilder target objects that it represents.
Requirement for enabling plug-in You must install the PowerDesigner Object Oriented Model on
your computer before you can use the PowerDesigner plug-in for PowerBuilder.
For a list of PowerDesigner versions that are compatible with PowerBuilder,
see the PowerBuilder Release Bulletin
.
Enabling the plug-in
You enable the PowerDesigner plug-in through the Plug-in Manager.
The Plug-in Manager displays when you select Tools>Plug-in
Manager from the PowerBuilder menu. You must select the PowerDesigner
item and click OK to enable the PowerDesigner plug-in.
Repository and online Help access
After you enable the plug-in, you can connect to the PowerDesigner Repository.
The Repository is a tool for storing versioned documents. It helps you
manage development in a multiuser environment. As in PowerDesigner, you
can right-click on a model in the tree view of the Local tab and
select menu items for Repository operations, such as Consolidate,
Update from Repository, or Compare with Repository.
When you open a class diagram painter, the Repository menu
is added to the main PowerBuilder menu.
If you installed online Help with PowerDesigner, that Help
is also available to the plug-in.