15 Oct 1997

(formerly S-Designor)

Powersoft Offers Evaluation Downloads

PowerDesigner is now the dominant player in data modeling and database generation software - leading in unit sales and name recognition. There are probably more enterprise scale organizations modeling production databases today in PowerDesigner (and PowerDesigner) than any other equivalent tool. We'll take a look below at why this is so and whether it indicates a good fit for your data modeling tasks.

Skip to the Bottom Line

So we are PowerDesigner fans - but far from fanatics. A very knowledgeable friend recently characterized PowerDesigner as "a neat, small tool". That reminds us of why we chose it five years ago: attractive, intuitive, fast, fun, and cheap. It also reminds us of the challenges facing PowerDesigner today. In spite of its pretensions, PowerDesigner remains a "small tool", incomplete and imperfect, rather than a large workshop as IEF or ADW once were.

Product Scope

Let's dispel a common misconception. Just because Sybase owns the PowerDesigner product does not mean that this is a narrow single-vendor solution like Designer/2000 from Oracle. PowerDesigner started out life as a platform-neutral tool from an independent vendor. PowerDesigner remains equally applicable to almost any relational database back end - IBM, Informix, Ingress, Oracle, Progress, Sybase to name a few - and many client side products as well - not only PowerBuilder but also Delphi, Visual Basic, and Java. PowerDesigner is to our knowledge the broadest data modeling tool in terms of end platform support.

ProcessAnalyst, despite the hint of process modeling in its name, is strictly a data flow diagram tool which feeds data discovery and definition into conceptual data models. DataArchitect starts there and carries on to generate the database, covering the great majority of functions in between as they relate to relational database design. WarehouseArchitect extends the range of DataArchitect with special wizards and DDL to support data warehouse design. AppModeler will generate client code to access and maintain data in the modeled database.

Looking at our vortex picture to the right, we think of three facets: static, dynamic, and interface. PowerDesigner covers static data design quite well from top to bottom but just tantalizes with tidbits of dynamic process design and offers very little to support interface design. These comments should be taken as clarification, not criticism. Let them help guide your expectations.

As more features are added, PowerDesigner has been partitioned into more modules offering feature sets appropriate to different layers of systems engineering tasks and teams. These modules have some overlap and are closely integrated with each other so that when all are installed they operate as one tool. The last on the list below, MetaWorks, is not a modeling tool per se but rather an administrative tool for managing models in a relational repository.

Detail Review Contents

Interface

Data Flow Diagramming in ProcessAnalyst (PAM)

Data Model Methodology and Architecture

Conceptual Data Model (CDM)

Physical Data Model (PDM)

WarehouseArchitect (WAM)

Reporting and Meta-data Access

Code Quality

We must mention in particular MetaWorks as an example of a weak design rushed to market with fundamental design flaws and extensive code problems. In our broad experience we have not encountered anyone who uses MetaWorks as advertised for multi-user model management and sharing. It just doesn't work. There are well documented specific reasons which we would be glad to discuss in detail if you are interested.

Of course no one is immune to bugs. That just reflects the imprecision of human thinking. And PowerDesigner does work on the whole. However this is not V1.0 of a new product. We, and many experienced users, wish Sybase would pay as much attention to testing as to marketing so we could pay more attention to modeling than beta testing a released product.

The Bottom Line

In the two years Sybase has owned this product, they have not yet demonstrated the vision, will, or resources to raise PowerDesigner's capabilities to its potential. You get a lot for your money - perhaps more than from any competitor - but you get neither what is promised nor completely what you need to run these tasks.

Would we buy PowerDesigner today with the same criteria as we did in 1993? Perhaps not. We were looking for the simplest, cheapest tool to persuade clients that some data model is better than none. Keep your eye on ER/Studio and InfoModeler, which are in that same underdog spot where PowerDesigner entered the picture five years ago.

Would we buy PowerDesigner today as a complete solution? Nothing is perfect, including PowerDesigner. The old legacy choices weren't either. After all, they gave CASE a bad name. I don't think you'll go wrong with PowerDesigner but the choice is not nearly so clear-cut as it was last year. Stay tuned to this rapidly changing market ...

See also

PowerDesigner Bugs & Other PESTs

Sybase Client/Server Explorer by James Bean

Contact

Sybase Inc. at http://www.sybase.com

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