The objects that you create in your model display the SQL code that
will be generated for them on the Preview tab of their property
sheets. Certain objects provide editors on other tabs to allow you to modify the SQL
statements.
Click the Preview tab in the property sheet of the model, packages, tables, and various other model objects in order to view the code that will be generated for it.
PowerDesigner can generate an SAP® BusinessObjects™ universe from your
PDM for editing in the BusinessObjects Universe Design or Information Design tools, or for
direct consumption by the Web Intelligence rich client. Generating a universe from your PDM
gives you access to table, view, and column names and comments and more reliable cardinality
information than if you create a universe directly from your database.
PowerDesigner can generate sample data to your database tables to
verify performance or to help in estimating the amount of memory that the database will
require. You can generate test data for some or all of the tables in your PDM to an empty or
existing database.
You can estimate the size of a database for all or some of the tables and other objects in your model. You can estimate the initial size of the database or project its growth over a number of years.
You can modify an existing database schema by to reflect changes in
your model. The PDM (source model) and the existing database schema (target model) are
merged using a database synchronization window, which allows you to choose which objects are
added, deleted, or updated in the target.
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.
Archive PDMs provide a snapshot of the structure of your database at a
point in time to allow you to determine model changes since that time when updating your
database. When comparing your model directly with a database or script (and not with an
archive PDM), some differences (particularly around renamed objects) can be lost, leading to
more drop/creates in place of alter statements.