The following markups are used in PowerDesigner XML files:
|
Markup |
Description |
|---|---|
|
<c:collection> </c:collection> |
Collection - A collection of objects linked to another object. You can use the PowerDesigner metamodel to visualize the collections of an object. For example <c:Children> |
|
<o:object> </o:object> |
Object - An object that you can create in PowerDesigner. For example <o:Model>. When an object is already defined in the file, a reference is created the next time it is browsed in the XML file. For example <o:Class Ref= "xyz"/> |
|
<a:attribute> </a:attribute> |
Attribute - An object is made up of a number of attributes each of which you can modify independently. For example <a:ObjectID> |
The format of XML files reflects the way model information is saved: PowerDesigner browses each object in order to save its definition.
The definition of an object implies the definition of its attributes and its collections. This implies that PowerDesigner checks each object and drills down the collections of this object to define each new object and collection in these collections, and so on, until the process finds terminal objects that do not need further analysis.
Since collections can overlap, the format of PowerDesigner model files resemble a tree view, which starts from a root node (the root object containing any model collection) and cascades through collections.
When an object is mentioned in a collection, PowerDesigner either defines this object using the <o:object Id="XYZ"> syntax or references it with the <o:object Ref="XYZ"/> (empty tag) syntax. Object definition is only used in composition collections, where the parent object owns the children in the association.
In both cases, XYZ is a unique identifier automatically assigned to an object when it is found for the first time.