Reverse Engineering IDL Files

You can reverse engineer IDL files to create classes and interfaces with their attributes and operations in a class diagram.

Reverse-engineering IDL files is subject to the following limitations:

Pre-processing - When a # symbol is displayed at the beginning of a line, the reverse feature processes both "if" and "else" values during reverse.

The following tags are not reversed:

fixed <8, 4>
fixed <8, 2>
sequence <short, 4>
sequence
[wire_marshal( wireVARIANT )]

An example is shown below:

struct bar {
  fixed <8, 4> high_scale;
  fixed <8, 2> low_scale;
};

struct bar {
  long val;
  sequence <short, 4> my_shorts;
};

typedef sequence<LinkKind>LinkKinds;
typedef [wire_marshal( wireVARIANT )]  struct tagVARIANT  VARIANT;

Note: You can right-click the files to reverse engineer and select the Edit command to view the content of your files. To use this command you have to associate the file extension with an editor in the General Options\Editor dialog box.

Select Language > Reverse Engineer IDL to display the Reverse IDL dialog box.
Select to reverse engineer files or directories from the Reverse Engineering dropdown listbox.
Click the Add button in the Selection page.

A standard Open dialog box is displayed.
Select the items or directory you want to reverse engineer, then cick the Open button.

Note:
You select several files simultaneously using the Ctrl or Shift keys. You cannot select several directories.

The Reverse IDL dialog box displays the items you selected.

Select reverse engineering options in the Options page.

Option	Result of selection
Create symbols	Creates a symbol for each reversed IDL object in the diagram. Otherwise, reversed objects are visible only in the browser
Mark classifiers not to be generated	Reversed classifiers (classes and interfaces) will not be generated from the model. To generate the classifier, you must select the Generate check box in its property sheet
Libraries	Specifies a list of library models to be used as references during reverse engineering. The reverse engineered model may contain shortcuts to objects defined in a library. If you specify the library here, the link between the shortcut and its target object (in the library) will be preserved and the library will be added to the list of target models in the reverse engineered model. You can drag and drop the libraries in the list in order to specify a hierarchy among them. PowerDesigner will seek to resolve shortcuts found in the reverse engineered model against each of the specified libraries in turn. Thus, if library v1.1 is displayed in the list above library v1.0, PowerDesigner will first attempt to resolve shortcuts against library v1.1 and will only parse library v1.0 if unresolved shortcuts remain. You should use the List of Target Models to manage libraries related to the reverse engineered model, for example, you can change the library version. See Core Features Guide > Linking and Synchronizing Models > Shortcuts and Replicas > Working with Target Models.

Option

Result of selection

Create symbols

Creates a symbol for each reversed IDL object in the diagram. Otherwise, reversed objects are visible only in the browser

Mark classifiers not to be generated

Reversed classifiers (classes and interfaces) will not be generated from the model. To generate the classifier, you must select the Generate check box in its property sheet

Libraries

Specifies a list of library models to be used as references during reverse engineering.

The reverse engineered model may contain shortcuts to objects defined in a library. If you specify the library here, the link between the shortcut and its target object (in the library) will be preserved and the library will be added to the list of target models in the reverse engineered model.

You can drag and drop the libraries in the list in order to specify a hierarchy among them. PowerDesigner will seek to resolve shortcuts found in the reverse engineered model against each of the specified libraries in turn. Thus, if library v1.1 is displayed in the list above library v1.0, PowerDesigner will first attempt to resolve shortcuts against library v1.1 and will only parse library v1.0 if unresolved shortcuts remain.

You should use the List of Target Models to manage libraries related to the reverse engineered model, for example, you can change the library version. See Core Features Guide > Linking and Synchronizing Models > Shortcuts and Replicas > Working with Target Models.

Click OK.

A progress box is displayed. If the model in which you are reverse engineering already contains data, the Merge Models dialog box is displayed.

For more information on merging models, see Core Features Guide > The PowerDesigner Interface > Comparing and Merging Models.

The classes and interfaces are added to your model. They are visible in the diagram and in the Browser. They are also listed in the Reverse page of the Output window, located in the lower part of the main window.