PowerDesigner 15 uses new metadata modeling features

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By David Rubinstein

September 23, 2008 — Enterprise architecture is a cross-discipline exercise that brings in elements from an organization's business, information and development infrastructures. And metadata is the thread that ties it all together.

Sybase today announced the release date of its PowerDesigner 15 modeling solution, with new metadata capturing and modeling features as well as support for enterprise architecture initiatives. The update to the product, which had been focused in the data modeling space, represents a strong move into the enterprise architecture tools market for Sybase.

PowerDesigner is now poised to compete with such tools as IBM's venerable System Architect, developed by Popkin Software, which was bought out by Telelogic. Telelogic in turn was acquired by IBM in 2007.

PowerDesigner is based on Sybase's "Link and Synch" technology for creating links between requirements, business process models, UML models and data models, according to Dimitri Volkmann, senior director of product management in Sybase's tools and mobile middleware division. The ability to manage metadata helps organizations become more agile in the way they respond to changes within the system. "We believe [enterprise architecture] tooling is a growing market and that there are two triggers for this," Volkmann said. "First is the need for compliance, the need to know how the system functions. Second is the need to understand how IT aligns with the business goals."

A new impact analysis diagram within PowerDesigner displays all dependencies and assists users in visualizing the impact of a change request, Volkmann explained. It also shows how much time and money it would take to implement the change. Expected to be available Oct. 31, PowerDesigner 15 costs from US$7,495 to $11,495, according to Sybase.

Also new to this version of the modeling tool is an enterprise architecture editor, which Volkmann described as a kind of meta-framework that helps users implement standard frameworks such as DoDAF or Zachman, or customizations. A new repository Web viewer gives browser-based access to stored metadata. Finally, the tool enables users to import business-level metadata from Microsoft's Visio diagramming tool to be melded with other EA information.

Related Search Term(s): enterprise architecture, modeling, IBM, Sybase

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