Reverse engineering is the process of generating a PDM (or certain PDM objects) from an
existing database schema. You can reverse engineer into a new PDM or an existing PDM
from one or more script files or from a live database.
Context
Note The database user that PowerDesigner uses to connect to the database
must have public access to catalog views, which is generally granted
by default when creating users.
PowerDesigner can reverse engineer a PDM for one or more SQL script files. The script will normally be the script used to generate the database but can also include other scripts.
PowerDesigner can reverse engineer a PDM from a live database connection. You must specify a 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 administrator.
When you reverse engineer a database from a live database connection, you can choose to populate your PDM with a subset of the available objects by selecting them in the Database Reverse Engineering Selection window.
External shortcuts depend on their corresponding target objects located in different models. When you need several models to design a single database, you can use shortcuts to share objects between models. The Target Models tab displays the list of detected target models containing target objects for shortcuts in the current model to reverse.
You can reverse engineer statistics for an existing database, such as the number of distinct or null values in a column or the average length of a character field. These can provide helpful information when optimizing a design.