Chapter 11 PowerDesigner File Format Specification
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.
Because of overlapping collections, the format of PowerDesigner model files can be compared to a tree view: it starts from a root node (the root object containing any model collection) and cascades through collections. This analogy is used by most XML editors to display the structure of XML files.
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"/>
syntax. Object definition is only used in composition collections (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.
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