The PowerDesigner Interface

The chapters in this part introduce you to the PowerDesigner® interface and the core concepts available for all kinds of models.

• Getting Started with PowerDesigner
  PowerDesigner is a graphical enterprise modeling solution supporting standard methodologies and notations and providing automated code reverse engineering and generation through customizable templates. It provides a scalable enterprise repository solution with strong security and versioning capabilities to aid multi-user development, powerful reporting capabilities, and is highly extensible.
• The Browser
  The Local tab of the Browser provides a hierarchical view of all the model objects in your workspace. If the Browser is not visible, select ViewBrowser (or press Alt+0) to display it.
• Projects and Frameworks
  A project allows you to group together all the models and other types of documents you need for a particular modeling task, and save them as a simple entity in your repository.
• Objects
  Modeling objects, such as tables and entities, are the building blocks of your models. All the objects in a model are listed as items in the Browser and they may also appear as symbols in your diagrams.
• Diagrams, Matrices, and Symbols
  Most PowerDesigner models contain diagrams, in which your model objects are represented by symbols. You can add a dependency matrix to any model to show relationships between objects.
• Reports
  Reports allow you to publish information about your model, and can be used to provide documentation for your system.
• Comparing and Merging Models
  PowerDesigner provides powerful tools for comparing models and merging them.
• The Repository
  The PowerDesigner repository is a tool for storing and sharing versioned models and other files used in your modeling process. It provides robust, granular security, and supports full access from within PowerDesigner and viewing and some administration via a Web browser.
• The PowerDesigner Portal
  The PowerDesigner Portal allows you to view the contents of your PowerDesigner repository in your web browser. You can share your models with a wide audience, including those who are not PowerDesigner users. Users with the appropriate rights can edit object descriptions directly in the Browser.
• The PowerDesigner Plugin for Eclipse
  During your installation of PowerDesigner, you can choose to install a plugin to allow you to use PowerDesigner within your Eclipse environment. The PowerDesigner plugin for Eclipse is available for Eclipse v3.2 to v3.6.
• The PowerDesigner Add-In for Visual Studio
  During your installation of PowerDesigner, you can choose to install a plugin to allow you to use PowerDesigner within your Visual Studio environment. The PowerDesigner add-in for Microsoft Visual Studio and Team Foundation is available for Visual Studio 2005, 2008, and 2010.
• Customizing Your Modeling Environment
  PowerDesigner is highly customizable. You can modify its interface to suit your work habits, set default naming conventions, change the appearance of object symbols, add new properties to objects, and even create your own types of objects.