Stability has not been the hallmark of PowerDesigner through its four or five releases thus far in 1995. Furthermore there is a creeping sensation up the back of one's neck that Powersoft is more likely to be interested in augmenting PowerDesigner's strong PowerBuilder CASE front end than in extending core data modeling features. Will PowerDesigner 5.0 feel like PowerBuilder 3.0? Is the compulsion to "upgrade or perish" stronger than the commitment to "make it work before (or soon after) we ship"???
Come to think of it, NIAM/ORM and E-R/I-E methods have both existed about twenty years yet seldom reference each other except in denigration. Halpin makes almost no mention of overlap or similarities to other methods, although he writes convincingly regarding the superiority of ORM.
I have often reflected that each methodologist must invent a new vocabulary and discard the old, perhaps to validate his own wisdom, perhaps to perpetuate job security. But from my ignorant point of view it would seem a lot more efficient to recognize the commonality and core truths, building more rapidly and surely from those to our next generation of meta methods.