Setting Data Profiling Constraints

PowerDesigner allows you to define data profiling constraints to control the range and format of data allowed in your database. You can specify constraints on the Standard Checks and Additional Checks tabs of table columns in your PDM, entity attributes in your CDM or LDM, and domains. You can also specify data quality rules on the Rules tab of PDM tables and columns, CDM/LDM entities and attributes, and domains.

The following constraints are available on the Standard Checks tab of PDM columns, CDM/LDM entity attributes, and CDM/LDM/PDM domains:

Property

Description

Values

Specifies the range of acceptable values. You can set a:
  • Minimum - The lowest acceptable numeric value
  • Maximum - The highest acceptable numeric value
  • Default - The value assigned in the absence of an expressly entered value. For the PDM, you can enter a default value or select a keyword from the list, which is defined in the Script\Sql\Keywords\ReservedDefault entry of the DBMS definition file.

Characteristics

Specifies the shape of acceptable data. You can choose a:
  • Format - A number of standard formats are available in the list and you can create your own format for reuse elsewhere or simply enter a format in the field.
  • Unit - A standard measure. This field is informational only and is not generated.
  • No space - Space characters are not allowed.
  • Cannot modify - The value cannot be updated after initialization.

Character case

Specifies the acceptable case for the data. You can choose between:
  • Mixed case [default]
  • Uppercase
  • Lowercase
  • Sentence case
  • Title case

List of values

Specifies the various values that are acceptable.

If you have specified a non-automatic test data profile, you can use the values defined in the profile to populate the list by clicking the Update from Test Data Profile tool.

Select the Complete check box beneath the list to exclude all other values not appearing in the list.

Note: When specifying strings in the list of values, quotation marks will be added around the values in the generated script. However, quotation marks will not be added if you surround the value by tilde characters, if the value is a keyword (such as NULL) defined in the DBMS, or if PowerDesigner does not recognize your data type as a string. Additional quotation marks will not be added if you have supplied them. The generation of single or double quotation marks depends on the target DBMS. The following examples show how various string values will be generated for a DBMS that uses single quotation marks: