Chapter 5 Managing Models

Defining name/code format

Name and code format encompasses constraints on length, character case and type for the name and the code of objects.

By default, PowerDesigner displays object names, you can modify this option and choose to display the code of objects.

You can set name and code format for:

Models and packages
Each type of object in a model
Reusable templates you can apply to different types of objects in a model

From the Model Options dialog box, you can define the following options for names and codes:

Option	Description
Display Name	Displays the names of objects in the interface
Display Code	Displays the codes of objects in the interface
Enable name/code conversions	Enables or disables the use of conversion scripts and conversion tables to generate a code from a name or a name from a code. For more information, see the "Defining name/code conversion" section
Naming Template	Allows you to use a template for name and code format for several types of objects within a model
Maximum Length	Maximum number of characters. In a PDM, this maximum number of characters can come from the Registry (if you defined a Maximum length and clicked the Set As Default button) or from the DBMS definition file. If a maximum length is declared in both the Registry and the DBMS, PowerDesigner uses the length with higher constraint. For example, in the case where the Registry = 128 and the DBMS = 30, PowerDesigner uses 30 characters for maximum length
Character Case	Indicates authorized character cases: Uppercase, Lowercase, and Mixed Case
Valid Characters	List of authorized characters, you can type ranges of valid characters
All Valid	Accept all characters
Invalid Characters	List of unauthorized characters. You can use this box to type exceptions to the ranges of valid characters
No Accents	Removes accents from accented characters
Default Character	Character used to replace the invalid characters in the name or code

Character selection

When you specify valid characters you define which characters will be accepted and then, you indicate in the invalid character box, which characters will be considered as invalid among those.

The following syntax applies to valid and invalid characters.

Character set	Syntax	Example
Interval of characters	Characters in single quotation marks separated by a dash	'a'-'z' 'a'-'z', 'A'-'Z', '0'-'9'
Single character and character string	Character in quotation marks	"a", "xyz"

Default valid characters

PowerDesigner allows the following default valid characters for the codes format:
'a'-'z','A'-'Z','0'-'9',"_"

Default invalid characters

PowerDesigner defines the following default invalid characters for the names format:
"+-*/\.,!:;"