Partially adapted from

PowerDesigner Tips and Tricks

Adapted from PowerDesigner Advanced Tips and Technique, a TechWave 2001 session by Jay Stevens,
Manager, Worldwide Product Support, Design Tools

Tips and Tricks with PowerDesigner Diagrams

PowerDesigner introduced a new concept in Version 7 to help you manage projects
involving large models and/or team design efforts Diagrams, Packages and Shortcuts.
Diagrams allow you to create multiple views of our model without affecting the
underlying metadata. There are some nice advantages of this feature that go beyond
subdividing the view into subject-areas. For example:

Diagrams as an alternate view:

Diagrams can help you prepare and maintain separate views of the same model
information, like a high level view vs. a detailed view. Simply create two diagrams in the
same package, one to display the objects without attributes or identifiers and another that
can display them with both. In this way, you can easily create multiple views of differing
detail or complexity, like one view for the end user, one view for DBA or developer and
one view for management

Diagrams as an alternate notation:

Another interesting use of the diagram concept is to create two different views of the
Physical Data Model one using the Relational notation, and a second one using the
Conceptual (Entity/Relationship or Crows-feet notation). This way, your audience can
see the same information, but in the notation they prefer, without having to maintain two
different sets of metadata. Reports can include both diagrams making it easy to publish
both a standard view and a conceptual view of the physical model.

Tips and Tricks with PowerDesigner Packages

PowerDesigners Packages give you the ability to sub-divide the model into more
manageable, more secure subject areas or units of work. These divisions come with the
concept of ownership, and allow you to contain an objects definition to one particular
area, or package. There are some other advantages to this feature:

Using Packages for object selection

PowerDesigner can take the contents of a single package and use it as the input to the
code and model generation systems, to the report writer, as well as for use in the
consolidation and extraction process to the repository. This makes it easy for you to

process only one portion of the model at a time. If you want to create a report on some of
the objects in your model, you can contain those objects to a single package, and create a
report based only on the package. You can, of course, select multiple packages at once,
but still have the benefit of easily reducing the amount of work being done by
PowerDesigner.

Multiple levels of sub-division

PowerDesigner does not stop at one level of Packages. You may easily add packages
within packages and create a hierarchy as deep as you need it. This is second nature to
Java developers, the concept comes directly from the UML idea of packages, but for
folks in the data modeling world, this is a nice improvement from the traditional, onelevel deep subject area mechanisms youve had in the past.
Permissions in the repository
As you have seen in past issues of Blueprint, PowerDesigner has an excellent Enterpriseclass repository for you to manage your models, and design as part of a team. You have
also seen that PowerDesigners repository allows you to set permissions on packages, and
use this to help prevent users from affecting controlled work being done by other users or
teams.
However, there are cases where PowerDesigner will allow a change made in an
authorized package to change contents in an unauthorized package, to ensure model
integrity. If this happens, do not be alarmed, it is expected. One classic example of this
feature is when you delete an object: if you delete an object that is referenced by other
packages as a shortcut, you not only delete the source object (this is allowed since it is
contained in the authorized package), but you also delete the shortcuts from all other
packages (even if you are not authorized to read/write those packages) since without the
object, the shortcuts have no meaning.
Object and Database Support Editor
PowerDesigner has the capability to have anyone customize the database support or the
object language generators. This seems simple enough, but there are many elements to
this work. To make things a little easier, here are some definitions to help you focus your
efforts to customize PowerDesigner:
Main sections of the Editor:
For All:
General

- Identification and major flags

Extended Attributes - allows extension of PowerDesigner metadata, sometimes

used for special database or object language support
For Database Support
Script

 SQL

- Major SQL behavior

Objects

- Details for each type of object

Datatype

- Datatype conversion tables

ODBC
commands

- Same structure as Script, used if ODBC requires different

Object Language support

Sctipt
Constants - Define standard constants allowed
Datatypes - Define mapping to PowerDesigner datatypes
Events

- Define standard events, i.e. constructor

Namings - Define default names for generated operations

Objects

- Details for each type of object

Stereotypes - Allows the extension of standard UML objects to be more

specific
Merge screen is used for everything
As documented in the September Blueprint, the compare/merge technology is what helps
you create models that are truly different representations, different views, of the same
system. You can be certain the object and data models that you create in PowerDesigner
are representing the same solution to the business problems outlined in the OO or data
analysis youve performed. However, there is yet another place you can use this
technology that is not directly related to modeling, but is related to extending the
capabilities of PowerDesigner itself.
Compare and Merge for definition files
If you have changed any existing object language or database definition, you may need to
compare back to the original file to see what you have changed. When PowerDesigners
new versions are released, Sybase makes changes to the shipped versions and you may
need to use this feature to migrate all or selected changes made to an older version of the
definition into the new, improved Sybase version. Some of the changes you made may
have been to add a capability not yet supported by Sybase, but is now obsolete because
Sybase has officially added support so the migration of your edits needs to be userselectable. You can select the compare/merge facility from the Compare button in the
Resource List window (Figure 1).

Figure 1 - The Compare Button

Drilling into the details in the Compare/Merge tool

If you are viewing large properties (like the code in the Implementation field, for
example) it is often difficult to see the differences between the target and the source. To
overcome this, simply double click the property. This will display a new window, which
will display all the differences between the two objects for that specific detail. Looking
at the implementation code detail, the difference appears in a new window as a diff
report. (Figure 2).

Figure 2 - The "Diff" report for a method body change

This feature is especially useful for descriptions, annotations, triggers, stored procedures,
language implementation fields, etc. where there is a large body of text or code to
compare.
List tips
In PowerDesigner, you will find yourself opening many different lists, lists of tables, lists
of classes, lists of attributes, etc. Here are some nice features you can take advantage of
to make using Lists a but easier:
Customize Columns and Filters button in toolbar - add or remove displayed
columns
PowerDesigner has many different ways you can filter the contents of the list. If you
select the Customize Columns and Filters button on any list window (Figure 3) you
may change what is included in the list view, as well as apply expressions to any field to
narrow the list to a selected set of values.

Figure 3 - The Customize Columns and Filter button

Multi-select to make same change to many objects

PowerDesigner allows you to use standard Windows multi-select techniques (Shift-Click
to multi-select a range, CTRL-Click to multi-select individual items one at a time until all
the desired items are selected together) and make a change to all these items
simultaneously. For example, you can multi-select in a list of PDM references and
change the first one in the selected list from Declarative to Trigger, and all other selected
references will also change with it.
Quick Navigation
PowerDesigner lists can be quickly scrolled by the following hot-keys:
Ctrl-Up

- First line in list

Ctrl - Down

- Last line in list

Ctrl - Left

- First column on row

Ctrl - Right

- Last column on row

Mouse-less Property Sheet Navigation

You may use the following key combinations to navigate property sheets within
PowerDesigner without using a mouse. This can be a great time saver when performing
multiple edits within one model, or examining the properties of many different objects in
a short period of time.

 Ctrl - Tab

- Next tab page

Ctrl-Shift-Tab - Previous tab page

Ctrl-PgUp
have focus

- Next sub tab, Notes Description or Annotations, text area must

Ctrl-PgDn

- Previous sub tab