Use powerdesigner to create an Enterprise Knowledge Base

1 Overview 

Enterprise-level application development is usually completed by a team. In different stages of the software development process, a number of huge and complex analysis and design models are generated, the addition of team members and frequent updates of software versions require an ideal team development solution that allows team members to work collaboratively. Traditional configuration management software, such as CVS, rational clearcase, and customized ual source safe, focuses on software.CodeVersion Control and process control, configuration and use are more complex, and are separated from the model design tool. developers need to switch between different tools and manage models with a large granularity, it is usually a model level.

Powerdesigner is a complete enterprise modeling solution that integrates several standard modeling technologies: traditional database modeling and UML application.ProgramModeling and business process modeling, and provides business process model-BPM, conceptual data model (conceptual data model-CDM ), supports eight models, including physical data model-PDM and object oriented model-oom. To effectively manage the modeling process and the models and documents generated during the modeling process of enterprise applications throughout the lifecycle, powerdesigner provides a simple configuration from version 10.0, repository, an easy-to-use enterprise knowledge base. In terms of storage and management of information in modeling and design processes, repository integrates object-oriented concepts, highly refined version control granularity, and supports a wide range of design models and file types, it provides an integrated design modeling and version control environment for the development team, greatly improving the development efficiency of the team. The object search function provided by repository allows you to track model changes and understand the reasons for changes. You can use the information Liquidity Model of powerdesigner to learn about the impact of changes on the entire project-related model. On this basis, you can generate corresponding project reports, including model information, historical change information, and model association information.

2. Enterprise Knowledge Base

The main embodiment of powerdesigner's knowledge base is its built-in repository. A repositor usually uses a relational database management system (RDBMS) to store table and data information. Repository provides multiple roles and comprehensive permission control, which ensures resource sharing, data consistency, and integrity within the team more efficiently and conveniently. The Repository System Structure 1 is shown in.

Its features include:
1. Model Management-store and versioned powerdesigner models and other types of documents in the same location. You can access the server database on the client, merge/commit, and extract (extract) files to maintain data integrity and consistency.
2. Security-role-based security mechanism for comprehensive permission management. The database administrator or team leader can control the user's access to and visualization areas of the model. It also provides the access logging function.
3. Cross-model conflict analysis-repository can provide and maintain complete storage and complete dependencies between models for cross-model conflict analysis.
4. Software Asset Management-find and reuse cross-model and project objects.

3. Application Instances

Powerdesigner's enterprise knowledge base can manage various models during software analysis and development, such as requirement analysis model (Order Fulfillment rqm in 3) and business process model (orderfulfillbpm in 3, even images and other documents in any format (such as Word ).
The basic workflow 2 for Version Control Using repository is shown in. This article uses the order processing subsystem's object-oriented model (OOM) as an example (3) to demonstrate several major features and general operation processes of repository.

3.1 create a repository

3.1.1 define Repository
To create a repository, you must first define the repository as follows:
Step 1: select the menu item repositoryrepository Definitions
Step 2: click Add a row on the menu bar to add a new repository definition. Enter the repository name (such as sample), repository user (such as IRIS), click the button at the end of the Data Souce name cell, set the ODBC data source, and specify the database for storing the repository (4 ).
Step 3: after setting up, double-click the row where the newly added repository is located to test the database connection. If you are prompted that the connection is successful, you can proceed to the next step to initialize repository.

3.1.2 initialize Repository
After the connection test is successful, you can perform the first repository connection.
Step 1: select the menu item repositoryconnect
Step 2: Enter the username and password for logging on to repository and the database respectively, and click OK.
Step 3: When you see "repository is not installed to database ..." Click OK to install repository to the database. Powerdesigner automatically creates required tables and data and waits for the specified database.

Note: When prompted to install the script "repository installation script", do not press execute. After you press execute, some databases (at least MySQL 5.2.1 is the case, MSSQL 2000 does not). The correct method is to copy the script and execute the query, which is generally solved in 2 minutes.

Note that the system will log on to the repository admin by default no matter who you are logged on to the repository for the first time (you will usually ask you to reset the password ), the purpose is to have sufficient permissions to create the required tables and data in the database ,.
At this point, the initialization is complete. You can connect to the repository for subsequent settings or operations. User information, configuration information, version information, and data information are stored in the corresponding table.

3.2 set user and group and operation Permissions
The User Permissions provided by repository are shown in table 1.

Table 1 permission Definitions

Permission	Description
Connect)	You can connect to Repository
Freeze versions)	Users can freeze file versions
Lock versions)	Users can lock the file version.
Manage branches)	You can create, modify, and delete branches.
Manage configurations)	Users can create, modify, and delete configurations.
Manage all documents)	Users can create, merge, extract, unlock, unfreeze, define license, and delete any file version.
Manage Users)	Users can create, modify, and delete users and groups, authorize users and groups, and add users or groups to a group.
Manage Repository)	You can upgrade repository and delete databases.

The preceding permissions can be used in combination to create users with different permission levels. Table 2 lists typical roles and permission settings.

Table 2 typical role settings

role	permission
Database Administrator	Manage the knowledge base and users
Data Administrator	connect and manage files
Team Leader	connection, version locking, version freezing, branch management, and configuration management
developer/designer	connection, lock version, freeze version,

 3.2.1 set user and group)
Before setting a user, the system needs to connect to the repository with Admin.
Select the menu item repositoryusers to add a new user (such as IRIS ).
A group is a set of users with common permissions. Select the menu item repositorygroups to add a new group (such as designers ).
Double-click a user (Group) to enter propertiesrights to set the user (Group) permission.

3.2.2 Add a user or group to a specified group
To add a user/group (such as IRIS) to a specified group (such as designers), double-click the user (Group) to enter propertiesgroups (parent groups ), add the specified group to the list. You can also add this user/group to the group propertiesmembers of the specified group.
Set the user group relationship and permission settings after the user and the group. 5 is shown in.

Version Management 3.3

3.3.1 merge/submit (merge lidate)
To add a project to repository for version control, right-click the target project (such as UML2 orders analysis) and choose submit lidate for submission, as shown in figure 6. Here, you can choose whether to add a model (new) or update the current version of the model in the repository. When the project joins repository for the first time, the default value is new. After setting, click OK.
Note: You can set some general options on the repository node of toolsgeneral options of powerdesigner. For example, refresh repository automatically at a specified time interval, set whether to automatically connect to repository and the default setting to freeze new submitted versions so that later submitted versions will automatically increase.

Repository updates an existing version or adds a new version based on user settings. When updating the repository version, if the local file is different from the file in the repository, the system will pop up a window showing conflicts between files. You can manually select/discard conflicts to merge versions. The tree structure in the repository Brower lists subdirectories and objects contained in the project. 7.

3.3.2 extract (extract)
When you need to restore the old file version, you can perform the extraction operation.
Select an existing project, right-click Update from repository, select the project name and version to be extracted, and click OK to copy the model from repository to the local device. 8.

You can also select the project to be extracted from the repository brower interface and right-click extract to perform the same operation. After the update operation is completed, you must submit the project.

3.3.3 version Comparison
Powerdesigner's repository provides two methods for version comparison.
One is to select the target file on the local interface of the workspace, right-click and select compare with repository; the other is to select the target file on the repository brower interface, and right-click and select compare. The version comparison setting page 9 is displayed.

Select the version to be compared and click OK. The comparison result is 10. You can see that the two methods show users the differences between the two versions or between the local files and the repository version in a very detailed graphical interface, especially for model files, for example, the object-oriented model OOM can be refined to object-oriented classes and attributes, or data table columns. In this window, you can set the display mode, such as show all objects or show all changes.

3.3.4 Object Search
In repository Brower, select the target model and right-click find objects to search for objects. Page 11. You can search by name & positioning, local date, repository date, and advanced. After setting, click find now to query the target object.

4 Conclusion
Repository provides version management functions, including manage branches, manage deployments, and object queries to track, record project changes, and reuse existing objects, to better support the efficient concurrent Work of team members. Combined with repository's outstanding performance in version management and maintenance, project coordination, product quality improvement, software security and risk reduction, powerdesigner will continue to provide more powerful support for enterprise modeling. In addition to the existing features, enterprises can also use the secondary development feature of powerdesigner to customize product features to meet their own needs.

Reprinted from: http://tech.it168.com/m/2007-08-28/200708281602597.shtml