The PowerDesigner Portal allows you to view the contents of your repository in your standard web browser. Before beginning the installation, you should already have created your repository database and have the DBMS user name and password to hand.
The PowerDesigner installation disc includes database access and web application layers that are required to browse your repository from the web, along with a standard Apache Tomcat web server. For maximum responsiveness, we recommend that you install the database access layer on the same machine as your repository database, while the web application layer can be installed on any appropriate machine.
While each instance of the PowerDesigner Portal database access layer can only communicate with a single repository database, a single web application instance can communicate with multiple database access layers and provide a single point of access for users browsing multiple repositories.
For information about using the PowerDesigner Portal, see Chapter 3, Browsing the Repository via the Web in Working with the Repository .