Chapter 14 Reverse Engineering a Database into a PDM

Getting Started with Reverse Engineering

Reverse engineering is the process of generating a PDM (or certain PDM objects) from an existing database schema. You can reverse engineer an existing database schema into a new PDM or into an existing PDM.

There are two ways to reverse engineer a PDM from a database schema:

Generate using	Description
Script file	The script will normally be the script used to generate the database but can also include other scripts. If you use more than one script files, make sure that the order of the files respects dependencies among objects (for example, trigger creation scripts must come after table creation scripts; and grant permission scripts must come after both table and user creation scripts. For more information, see the "Reverse Engineering from Scripts" section.
ODBC data source	You reverse engineer the schema for an existing database, specifying an ODBC data source, and connection information.You can select to use administrator permissions in order to be able to select the system tables that are reserved to a database admin. For more information, see the "Reverse Engineering from an ODBC Data Source" section.

Generate using

Description

Script file

The script will normally be the script used to generate the database but can also include other scripts.

If you use more than one script files, make sure that the order of the files respects dependencies among objects (for example, trigger creation scripts must come after table creation scripts; and grant permission scripts must come after both table and user creation scripts.

For more information, see the "Reverse Engineering from Scripts" section.

ODBC data source

You reverse engineer the schema for an existing database, specifying an ODBC data source, and connection information.You can select to use administrator permissions in order to be able to select the system tables that are reserved to a database admin.

For more information, see the "Reverse Engineering from an ODBC Data Source" section.

Set options appropriately
When you reverse engineer a database, whether from a script or an ODBC data source, make sure that you set the rebuild options appropriately. Click the Options tab and select or clear the checkboxes to rebuild references and/or primary keys according to your needs. By default, no rebuild options are selected.