Getting Started with PowerDesigner

PowerDesigner is a graphical and easy-to-use enterprise modeling environment.

It provides:

Integrated modeling through standard methodologies and notations:

Data (E/R, Merise)

Business (BPMN, BPEL, ebXML)

Application (UML)
Automatic code generation through customizable templates:

SQL (with more than 50 supported DBMSs)

Java

.NET
Powerful reverse engineering capabilities to document and update existing systems
A scalable enterprise repository solution with strong security and versioning capabilities to aid multi-user development
Automated, customizable reporting capabilities
An extensible environment, permitting you to add new rules, commands, concepts and attributes to your modeling and coding methodologies

The Welcome Page
The Welcome page gives you one-click access to all your recent projects, workspaces, and models, as well as providing a direct link to the New Model and New Project dialogs and a range of help materials. To suppress this page, select the Do not show this page again check box. You can redisplay it at any time by selecting View Welcome Page .
PowerDesigner Interface Overview
A typical PowerDesigner window contains various panes providing you with various views on your modeling project.
Modeling with PowerDesigner
PowerDesigner provides a unique set of enterprise modeling tools that bring together the standard techniques and notations of business process modeling, data modeling and UML application modeling with other powerful features to assist you in analyzing, designing, building, and maintaining your applications, using software engineering best practices.
Linking and Synching
PowerDesigner's sophisticated inter-model and code and database generation capabilities allow you to synchronize your models with each other and the applications they represent.
PowerDesigner Documentation
Full documentation is provided in the form of context-sensitive help (available by pressing F1) and as PDFs.
Creating a Model
You create a new model by selecting File New Model .
Saving a Model
Each model is saved in a separate file, with an extension specific to its model type. When you save a model, PowerDesigner also automatically creates a backup copy.
Connecting to a Database
PowerDesigner allows you to define data connections to access information in different database management systems (DBMSs) using Structured Query Language (SQL).
PowerDesigner License Management
PowerDesigner is licensed as a package of modules, or types of model. Various packages are available, each regrouping some or all of the modules. Your permission to use these modules is controlled by the Sybase licensing system, SySam.
Next Steps
Now that you are familiar with the PowerDesigner Interface, you will want to start experimenting with a particular type of model suitable to your needs.

Parent topic: The PowerDesigner Interface