PowerDesigner

PowerDesigner is a collaborative enterprise modelling tool produced by Sybase. PowerDesigner runs under Microsoft Windows as a native application, and runs under Eclipse through a plugin.

PowerDesigner data modeling tool market share in 2002 was 39%. [ [http://www.csdn.net/subject/powerdesigner/techwave2005/dev427%20model-driven%20development%20with%20powerdesigner.pdf Xiao-Yun Wang, PowerDesigner Chief Architect, 2005] ] PowerDesigner is priced from $3,000 to $7,500 USD per developer seat. [Sybase]

Features

PowerDesigner includes support for:
* Business Process Modeling ("ProcessAnalyst") supporting BPMN
* Code generation (Java, C#, VB .NET, Hibernate, EJB3, NHibernate, JSF, WinForm (.NET and .NET CF), PowerBuilder, ...)
* Data modeling (works with most major RDBMS systems)
* Data Warehouse Modeling ("WarehouseArchitect")
* Eclipse plugin
* Object modeling (UML 2.0 diagrams)
* Report generation
* Repository
* Requirements analysis
* XML Modeling supporting XML Schema and DTD standards
* Visual Studio 2005 addin

See the [http://www.sybase.com/products/modelingmetadata/powerdesigner Sybase PowerDesigner webpage] for further information.

History

PowerDesigner started life as AMC*Designor in France and S-Designor internationally, which was written by Xiao-Yun Wang of SDP Technologies. Note that the "or" in the product name refers to "Oracle", since initially the product was developed to design Oracle databases, but very quickly evolved to support all major RDBMS in the market. SDP Technologies was French company that was started in 1983. Powersoft purchased SDP in 1995, and Sybase had purchased Powersoft earlier in 1994. Shortly after the acquisition, the product was renamed to be consistent with the Powersoft brand. Sybase currently owns all rights to PowerDesigner and PowerAMC (the french version of PowerDesigner).

Version History

* 1989 - The first commercial release of AMC*Designor (version 2.0) in France
* 1992 - The first commercial release of S-Designor in the US.
* 1994 - ProcessAnalyst was added to the suite in 1994.
* 1995 - S-Designor becomes PowerDesigner, AMC*Designor becomes PowerAMC
* 1997 - PowerDesigner 6.0 releases.
* 1998 - WarehouseArchitect was added.
* 1999 - PowerDesigner 7.0 was rewritten to take advantage of newer technologies and to provide an interface more consistent with other Sybase products.
* December 2001 - PowerDesigner 9.5 was initially released, with maintenance releases through 2003.
* December 2004 - Version 10.0 (Minerva release)
* 2005 - Version 11.0
* January 2006 - PowerDesigner 12.0 released with metadata mappings and reporting features
* August 2006 - PowerDesigner 12.1 released with enhanced support for Microsoft Visual Studio and SQL Server
* July 2007 - PowerDesigner 12.5 released with new ETL (Extract, transform, load) and EII (Enterprise Information Integration) modeling and full UML 2.0 diagrams support

tandards

PowerDesigner supports the following standards:
* BPEL4WS
* Business Process Modeling Notation (BPMN)
* Document Type Definition (DTD)
* ebXML
* IDEF
* RDBMS
* Rich Text Format (RTF)
* UML 2.0 diagrams
* XML
* XML Schema

Competitors

* Computer Associates ERwin
* Embarcadero ER/Studio
* ModelRight
* Quest Software Toad Data Modeler
* IBM Rational Software Architect [http://www-306.ibm.com/software/awdtools/architect/swarchitect/index.html]
* Grandite SILVERRUN

ee also

* Data modeling
* Data warehouse
* Model-driven architecture
* RDBMS
* UML
* XML
* XML Schema
* .pdm

References