Physical Options (DBMS)

For some DBMSs, additional options are used to specify how an object is optimized or stored in a database. In PowerDesigner, these options are called physical options and are displayed on the Physical Options and Physical Options (Common) tabs of object property sheets.

To appear on the Physical Options tab, an option must be defined in the Script\Objects\object\Options item (see Common Object Items). Default values can be stored in Options or in DefOptions. To appear on the Physical Options (Common) tab (or any other property sheet tab), the physical option must, additionally be associated with an extended attribute (see Adding DBMS Physical Options to Your Forms).

During generation, the options selected in the model for each object are stored as a SQL string in the %OPTIONS% variable, which must appear at the end of the Create statement of the object, and cannot be followed by anything else. The following example uses the correct syntax:

create table
[%OPTIONS%]

During reverse engineering by script, the section of the SQL query determined as being the physical options is stored in %OPTIONS%, and will then be parsed when required by an object property sheet.

During live database reverse engineering, the SqlOptsQuery SQL statement is executed to retrieve the physical options which is stored in %OPTIONS% to be parsed when required by an object property sheet.

You can use PowerDesigner variables (see PDM Variables and Macros) to set physical options for an object. For example, in Oracle, you can set the following variable for a cluster to make the cluster take the same name as the table.

Cluster %TABLE%

For information about setting physical options, see Data Modeling > Building Data Models > Physical Implementation > Physical Options.

• Simple Physical Options
  Simple physical options must contain a name, and may contain a %d, %s, or other variable to let the user specify a value, and keywords to specify permitted values and defaults.
• Composite Physical Options
  Composite physical options are specified over multiple lines, and contain one or more dependent options. If you add the composite option to the right pane of the Physical Options tab, all the dependant options are added with it. If you add a dependant option, the composite option is added as well to contain it.
• Adding DBMS Physical Options to Your Forms
  Many DBMSs use physical options as part of the definition of their objects. The most commonly-used physical options are displayed on a form, Physical Options (Common), defined under the appropriate metaclass. You can edit this form, or add physical options to your own forms.