I would pose the question on the powersoft.public.powerbuilder.powerdesigner
newsgroup as well. (server: forums.powersoft.com).
BTW, PowerDesigner was originally developed for Oracle only. It later added
support for other databases. And Sybase is fully committed to the product.
--
Terry Dykstra [TeamPS]
Canadian Forest Oil Ltd.
Mark Greaves wrote in message <6k1gur$57v$1_at_news-2.csn.net>...
>I have recently taken over maintaining an Entity-Relationship Diagram in
the
>DataArchitect tool of Powersoft's Power Designer (or Process Data Model, as
>it is called in DataArchitect). I am having a few problems with this
>product, and wonder if others have had similar troubles, and if there is a
>better tool available. Of course, I can't help but wonder, since Powersoft
>was bought out by Sybase, if it is wise to use this product for an Oracle
>database!
>
>Here are the problems I have encountered:
>
>1. It does not allow for the definition of combination triggers, such as
>"insert or update or delete". Triggers have to be coded as ONLY insert, or
>ONLY update, or ONLY delete.
>
>2. It creates redundant constraints. For each primary key column, it
>creates a separate NOT NULL constraint, which is unnecessary in Oracle,
>since primary keys by definition have to contain a value. This doesn't
>cause any errors in the database, but these extra constraints just clutter
>things up. I can't find any option to not create them either.
>
>3. It generates triggers for referential constraints, which handle the
>updating, deleting, etc. of child records when the parent is modified.
This
>often causes "mutating table" errors in oracle - a trigger can't modify a
>table which is linked by a constraint. I would much rather take care of my
>foreign key relationships through constraints than with these generated
>triggers.
>
>4. As for the diagramming tool itself, I find it rather awkward to use.
By
>default, it tends to plot connector lines on top of each other, and
crossing
>through unrelated tables on their way from a child table to a parent table.
>And the labels are placed in ways that make it very difficult to tell which
>line the label refers to. After spending many hours cleaning this all up,
I
>was able to create a presentable diagram. But then when I made one minor
>change (added a column to a table), the entire diagram reverted back to its
>default! Very annoying!!!
>
>It's possible that some of these problems are due to my lack of experience
>with this tool. But I have spent a fair amount of time going through the
>help files and manuals, and was not able to find solutions to the above
>problems. Any comments or advice will be appreciated!
>
>Mark Greaves
>
>
>
Received on Thu May 21 1998 - 00:00:00 CDT
