Description
Enabling Better Business Intelligence and Information Architecture
SAP Technology
Enabling Better Business Intelligence
and Information Architecture
With SAP® PowerDesigner® Software
©
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© 2014 SAP AG or an SAP afliate company. All rights reserved.
Table of Contents
4 Seeing the Big Picture with a 360-Degree View
Gaining Efciencies with SAP PowerDesigner
Additional Features and Benefts
Supported Modeling Techniques
Putting It All Together
Find Out More
3 Enabling Better Business Intelligence and Information Architecture
© 2014 SAP AG or an SAP afliate company. All rights reserved.
SAP® PowerDesigner® software is a leading modeling tool that helps you to improve your business
intelligence (BI) and information architecture. Using metadata management, the software benefts
your data governance, BI, data integration, and data consolidation eforts because it establishes
a 360-degree view of your key information assets. Enterprise-wide impact analysis functionality
helps reduce the time, risks, and costs associated with changes throughout your information
architecture.
4 Enabling Better Business Intelligence and Information Architecture
© 2014 SAP AG or an SAP afliate company. All rights reserved.
EMPOWER YOUR USERS WITH A COMMON LANGUAGE FOR IT AND BUSINESS
GAINING EFFICIENCIES WITH SAP PowerDesigner
SAP PowerDesigner has become a standard modeling tool for
many organizations worldwide. With our proven commitment
to innovations in data, information, and business modeling,
SAP PowerDesigner is a safe choice for all your modeling
environments.
At SAP, we’ve emphasized ease of use for SAP PowerDesigner.
Using a Microsoft Windows motif, the software’s highly cus-
tomizable, graphical user interface makes it easy for your users
to perform common tasks while empowering your advanced
users with rapid access to all features. Additionally, with its
robust modeling functionality, SAP PowerDesigner helps you
to visualize, analyze, and manipulate metadata to streamline
communication and collaboration between business and IT.
The software supports the following key benefts, helping
you to:
• Align business and IT – Obtain business and IT alignment
and team collaboration with our “link and sync” technology
by creating connections between requirements, business
language, and data models
• Improve team productivity – Give your developers a team-
sharing environment with a secure metadata repository for
all modeling types
• Document your existing systems – Foster greater enter-
prise collaboration through fexible, wizard-driven documen-
tation and Web-based reporting
• Support open software environments – Improve your under-
standing of heterogeneous systems with support for leading
XML, database, and process language standards within a
single tool and framework; over 80 relational database man-
agement system (RDBMS) defnitions are supported
• Enforce standards – Enforce corporate or regulatory stan-
dards and practices through embedded Visual Basic script-
ing, a fully scriptable interface, a customizable metamodel,
and a fully documented application programming interface
• Reduce the impact of change – Use our multimodel impact
analysis to reduce the time and cost of implementing changes
throughout your enterprise; integration of your requirements,
analysis models, business models, and data models provides
a comprehensive understanding of the changes
ADDITIONAL FEATURES AND BENEFITS
SAP PowerDesigner ofers a range of features to help you man-
age the fow of information between business and IT in a single
tool and to minimize the time, risk, and cost of changes to your
information architecture. Key features include:
• Customization – Along with its highly customizable inter-
face, you can optimize productivity by controlling everything
from the user interface to the way the software manages
modeling tasks and generates code.
• Requirements management – Detailed requirements analy-
sis links to all models for traceability; import and synchroni-
zation with Microsoft Word places your users directly into the
analysis and design lifecycle.
• Document generation – Wizard-driven lists, multimodel
documents, and fully hyperlinked Web reporting give your
nonmodeling users secure, controlled access to metadata
while fostering greater communication among all members
of your project team.
• Impact analysis – Models are fully integrated using our “link
and sync” technology, tying all model types together for com-
plete enterprise-wide or projectwide impact analysis and
streamlining communication and collaboration to dramatically
increase your entire organization’s responsiveness to change.
• Information mapping – Our drag-and-drop mapping editor
allows for easy, fast, and accurate documentation of depen-
dencies; you can simply drag to or from any supported source
to target model pairs and create comprehensive mapping def-
nitions used in data dictionary defnitions, impact analysis, and
warehouse extract, transform, and load (ETL) documentation.
• Metadata sharing – Using the software’s portal, your users
have full thin-client access to all authorized (by role-based
security) metadata, including graphics and full element def-
nitions and descriptions. With our portal composer license,
your users also can make edits to certain metadata directly
through the Web interface, allowing for greater participation
among a broader community and fostering a more collabora-
tive atmosphere.
Seeing the Big Picture with a 360-Degree View
5 Enabling Better Business Intelligence and Information Architecture
© 2014 SAP AG or an SAP afliate company. All rights reserved.
• Enterprise repository – The software’s fully integrated
design-time repository, hosted by popular relational data-
bases, is a highly scalable, centralized metadata manage-
ment utility that enables role-based security on models and
submodels, version control, confguration management,
version compare, impact analysis, and comprehensive
search functionality. The repository helps ensure that all of
your users have the latest metadata available, can take
appropriate actions based on changes committed to the
server, and share a single version of the truth.
• Enterprise glossary – SAP PowerDesigner lets you defne
your business terms and categories, complete with aliases, to
fully align data models with your business language. It enforces
the management of naming conventions throughout all models
to ensure consistent naming standards, business language
alignment, and support for data stewardship and governance
eforts.
SUPPORTED MODELING TECHNIQUES
SAP PowerDesigner supports a wide range of modeling tech-
niques, which are described below and depicted in Figures 1
through 8.
Conceptual Data Modeling
Conceptual data models based on Information Engineering
(IE), Barker, or IDEF1X notation provide a database and
technology–independent business representation of data
concepts and core relationships.
Conceptual data models iteratively generate into one or more
logical and physical data models based on desired levels of
abstraction and approaches to information architecture from
a common business view. See Figure 1.
Figure 1: Conceptual Data Modeling
6 Enabling Better Business Intelligence and Information Architecture
© 2014 SAP AG or an SAP afliate company. All rights reserved.
Logical Data Modeling
Logical data models that are based on IE, Barker, or IDEF1X
notation provide database-independent relational structures
for use by developers and designers for optimization and
understanding.
Logical data models can be developed independently or gener-
ated from conceptual data models. Logical data models can
generate to one or more physical data models. See Figure 2.
SAP PowerDesigner helps you to visualize, analyze,
and manipulate metadata to streamline communication
and collaboration between business and IT.
Figure 2: Logical Data Modeling
7 Enabling Better Business Intelligence and Information Architecture
© 2014 SAP AG or an SAP afliate company. All rights reserved.
Physical Data Modeling
Physical data models based on IE or IDEF1X notation let you
document, generate, and reverse-engineer structures for over
80 RDBMS (including the latest from SAP, Oracle, IBM, Microsoft,
NCR Teradata, MySQL, and more). Support includes database
artifacts and advanced techniques such as Java, XML, and
Web services in the database; security modeling; specialized
handling of views; and more. See Figure 3.
Figure 3: Physical Data Modeling
8 Enabling Better Business Intelligence and Information Architecture
© 2014 SAP AG or an SAP afliate company. All rights reserved.
Data Warehouse Modeling
Multidimensional diagrams document the online analytical
processing environments by representing cubes, facts, dimen-
sions, dimensional hierarchies, and queries independent of the
physical table structures used to store the warehouse or data
mart information.
The data mapping editor links the source defnition, warehouse,
mart, and reporting environment together. This provides for
clear impact analysis and design-time change management of
the BI environment. See Figure 4.
Figure 4: Data Warehouse Modeling
SAP PowerDesigner ofers a range of features to help you
manage the fow of information between business and IT
in a single tool and to minimize the time, risk, and cost of
changes to your information architecture.
9 Enabling Better Business Intelligence and Information Architecture
© 2014 SAP AG or an SAP afliate company. All rights reserved.
XML Modeling
XML models support canonical data models and physical XML
structure defnitions. The XML models generate or reverse-
engineer structures for document-type-defnition markup
language and schemas. These models are mapped to data
models to document XML and relational mappings as well
as for defnitions of XML in the database for RDBMS engines
that support this concept. See Figure 5.
Figure 5: XML Modeling
10 Enabling Better Business Intelligence and Information Architecture
© 2014 SAP AG or an SAP afliate company. All rights reserved.
Enterprise Glossary
Centrally managed by the enterprise repository, the enterprise
glossary helps ensure that business terms and defnitions are
established and consistently managed throughout all models.
This enforces consistent naming standards and business lan-
guage alignment and supports data stewardship and gover-
nance eforts.
When used in parallel with the enterprise glossary, the concep-
tual data model in SAP PowerDesigner provides a true data
dictionary. It streamlines communication by ensuring everyone
is ”speaking the same language.” See Figure 6.
Figure 6: Enterprise Glossary Figure 7: Data Movement Modeling
Data Movement Modeling
Exclusive to SAP PowerDesigner, the data movement model
documents all aspects of information movement. Source-data
stores, target-data stores, multiple transformations, publica-
tions, and subscriptions serve to document any ETL, enterprise
information integration, or replication process. See Figure 7.
11 Enabling Better Business Intelligence and Information Architecture
© 2014 SAP AG or an SAP afliate company. All rights reserved.
PUTTING IT ALL TOGETHER
SAP PowerDesigner supports a comprehensive set of data
modeling techniques. The software helps business and IT to
speak the same language, enabling better communication and
alignment between the two. Additionally, the software gives you
strong support for your data governance, BI, data integration,
and data consolidation eforts.
See Figure 8 for a snapshot of all the models that are available
to you with SAP PowerDesigner software.
FIND OUT MORE
To learn more about how SAP PowerDesigner software can
help your organization, call your SAP representative today or
visit us on the Web at www.sap.com/solutions/technology
/database/model-driven-architecture/index.epx.
Figure 8: Data Modeling Techniques Supported by SAP® PowerDesigner® Software
REPOSITORY
Conceptual
data model
BPM
Logical
data model
Requirements
model
Data move-
ment model
XML model
Physical
data model
Replication
defnition
DDL
RDBMS
XML DTD
schema
Forward engineering; Reverse engineering; Round-trip engineering; Import and export
BPM = business process management; DTD = document-type-defnition; DDL = data defnition language
www.sap.com/contactsap
CMP22171 (14/01)
© 2014 SAP AG or an SAP afliate company. All rights reserved.
No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form
or for any purpose without the express permission of SAP AG or an SAP
afliate company.
SAP and other SAP products and services mentioned herein as well as
their respective logos are trademarks or registered trademarks of SAP AG
(or an SAP afliate company) in Germany and other countries. Please seehttp://www.sap.com/corporate-en/legal/copyright/index.epx#trademark
for additional trademark information and notices. Some software
products marketed by SAP AG and its distributors contain proprietary
software components of other software vendors.
National product specifcations may vary.
These materials are provided by SAP AG or an SAP afliate company for
informational purposes only, without representation or warranty of any
kind, and SAP AG or its afliated companies shall not be liable for errors or
omissions with respect to the materials. The only warranties for SAP AG
or SAP afliate company products and services are those that are set
forth in the express warranty statements accompanying such products
and services, if any. Nothing herein should be construed as constituting an
additional warranty.
In particular, SAP AG or its afliated companies have no obligation to
pursue any course of business outlined in this document or any related
presentation, or to develop or release any functionality mentioned therein.
This document, or any related presentation, and SAP AG’s or its afliated
companies’ strategy and possible future developments, products, and/or
platform directions and functionality are all subject to change and may be
changed by SAP AG or its afliated companies at any time for any reason
without notice. The information in this document is not a commitment,
promise, or legal obligation to deliver any material, code, or functionality.
All forward-looking statements are subject to various risks and
uncertainties that could cause actual results to difer materially from
expectations. Readers are cautioned not to place undue reliance on these
forward-looking statements, which speak only as of their dates, and they
should not be relied upon in making purchasing decisions.
doc_629969184.pdf
Enabling Better Business Intelligence and Information Architecture
SAP Technology
Enabling Better Business Intelligence
and Information Architecture
With SAP® PowerDesigner® Software
©
2
0
1
4
S
A
P
A
G
o
r
a
n
S
A
P
a
f
l
i
a
t
e
c
o
m
p
a
n
y
.
A
l
l
r
i
g
h
t
s
r
e
s
e
r
v
e
d
.
© 2014 SAP AG or an SAP afliate company. All rights reserved.
Table of Contents
4 Seeing the Big Picture with a 360-Degree View
Gaining Efciencies with SAP PowerDesigner
Additional Features and Benefts
Supported Modeling Techniques
Putting It All Together
Find Out More
3 Enabling Better Business Intelligence and Information Architecture
© 2014 SAP AG or an SAP afliate company. All rights reserved.
SAP® PowerDesigner® software is a leading modeling tool that helps you to improve your business
intelligence (BI) and information architecture. Using metadata management, the software benefts
your data governance, BI, data integration, and data consolidation eforts because it establishes
a 360-degree view of your key information assets. Enterprise-wide impact analysis functionality
helps reduce the time, risks, and costs associated with changes throughout your information
architecture.
4 Enabling Better Business Intelligence and Information Architecture
© 2014 SAP AG or an SAP afliate company. All rights reserved.
EMPOWER YOUR USERS WITH A COMMON LANGUAGE FOR IT AND BUSINESS
GAINING EFFICIENCIES WITH SAP PowerDesigner
SAP PowerDesigner has become a standard modeling tool for
many organizations worldwide. With our proven commitment
to innovations in data, information, and business modeling,
SAP PowerDesigner is a safe choice for all your modeling
environments.
At SAP, we’ve emphasized ease of use for SAP PowerDesigner.
Using a Microsoft Windows motif, the software’s highly cus-
tomizable, graphical user interface makes it easy for your users
to perform common tasks while empowering your advanced
users with rapid access to all features. Additionally, with its
robust modeling functionality, SAP PowerDesigner helps you
to visualize, analyze, and manipulate metadata to streamline
communication and collaboration between business and IT.
The software supports the following key benefts, helping
you to:
• Align business and IT – Obtain business and IT alignment
and team collaboration with our “link and sync” technology
by creating connections between requirements, business
language, and data models
• Improve team productivity – Give your developers a team-
sharing environment with a secure metadata repository for
all modeling types
• Document your existing systems – Foster greater enter-
prise collaboration through fexible, wizard-driven documen-
tation and Web-based reporting
• Support open software environments – Improve your under-
standing of heterogeneous systems with support for leading
XML, database, and process language standards within a
single tool and framework; over 80 relational database man-
agement system (RDBMS) defnitions are supported
• Enforce standards – Enforce corporate or regulatory stan-
dards and practices through embedded Visual Basic script-
ing, a fully scriptable interface, a customizable metamodel,
and a fully documented application programming interface
• Reduce the impact of change – Use our multimodel impact
analysis to reduce the time and cost of implementing changes
throughout your enterprise; integration of your requirements,
analysis models, business models, and data models provides
a comprehensive understanding of the changes
ADDITIONAL FEATURES AND BENEFITS
SAP PowerDesigner ofers a range of features to help you man-
age the fow of information between business and IT in a single
tool and to minimize the time, risk, and cost of changes to your
information architecture. Key features include:
• Customization – Along with its highly customizable inter-
face, you can optimize productivity by controlling everything
from the user interface to the way the software manages
modeling tasks and generates code.
• Requirements management – Detailed requirements analy-
sis links to all models for traceability; import and synchroni-
zation with Microsoft Word places your users directly into the
analysis and design lifecycle.
• Document generation – Wizard-driven lists, multimodel
documents, and fully hyperlinked Web reporting give your
nonmodeling users secure, controlled access to metadata
while fostering greater communication among all members
of your project team.
• Impact analysis – Models are fully integrated using our “link
and sync” technology, tying all model types together for com-
plete enterprise-wide or projectwide impact analysis and
streamlining communication and collaboration to dramatically
increase your entire organization’s responsiveness to change.
• Information mapping – Our drag-and-drop mapping editor
allows for easy, fast, and accurate documentation of depen-
dencies; you can simply drag to or from any supported source
to target model pairs and create comprehensive mapping def-
nitions used in data dictionary defnitions, impact analysis, and
warehouse extract, transform, and load (ETL) documentation.
• Metadata sharing – Using the software’s portal, your users
have full thin-client access to all authorized (by role-based
security) metadata, including graphics and full element def-
nitions and descriptions. With our portal composer license,
your users also can make edits to certain metadata directly
through the Web interface, allowing for greater participation
among a broader community and fostering a more collabora-
tive atmosphere.
Seeing the Big Picture with a 360-Degree View
5 Enabling Better Business Intelligence and Information Architecture
© 2014 SAP AG or an SAP afliate company. All rights reserved.
• Enterprise repository – The software’s fully integrated
design-time repository, hosted by popular relational data-
bases, is a highly scalable, centralized metadata manage-
ment utility that enables role-based security on models and
submodels, version control, confguration management,
version compare, impact analysis, and comprehensive
search functionality. The repository helps ensure that all of
your users have the latest metadata available, can take
appropriate actions based on changes committed to the
server, and share a single version of the truth.
• Enterprise glossary – SAP PowerDesigner lets you defne
your business terms and categories, complete with aliases, to
fully align data models with your business language. It enforces
the management of naming conventions throughout all models
to ensure consistent naming standards, business language
alignment, and support for data stewardship and governance
eforts.
SUPPORTED MODELING TECHNIQUES
SAP PowerDesigner supports a wide range of modeling tech-
niques, which are described below and depicted in Figures 1
through 8.
Conceptual Data Modeling
Conceptual data models based on Information Engineering
(IE), Barker, or IDEF1X notation provide a database and
technology–independent business representation of data
concepts and core relationships.
Conceptual data models iteratively generate into one or more
logical and physical data models based on desired levels of
abstraction and approaches to information architecture from
a common business view. See Figure 1.
Figure 1: Conceptual Data Modeling
6 Enabling Better Business Intelligence and Information Architecture
© 2014 SAP AG or an SAP afliate company. All rights reserved.
Logical Data Modeling
Logical data models that are based on IE, Barker, or IDEF1X
notation provide database-independent relational structures
for use by developers and designers for optimization and
understanding.
Logical data models can be developed independently or gener-
ated from conceptual data models. Logical data models can
generate to one or more physical data models. See Figure 2.
SAP PowerDesigner helps you to visualize, analyze,
and manipulate metadata to streamline communication
and collaboration between business and IT.
Figure 2: Logical Data Modeling
7 Enabling Better Business Intelligence and Information Architecture
© 2014 SAP AG or an SAP afliate company. All rights reserved.
Physical Data Modeling
Physical data models based on IE or IDEF1X notation let you
document, generate, and reverse-engineer structures for over
80 RDBMS (including the latest from SAP, Oracle, IBM, Microsoft,
NCR Teradata, MySQL, and more). Support includes database
artifacts and advanced techniques such as Java, XML, and
Web services in the database; security modeling; specialized
handling of views; and more. See Figure 3.
Figure 3: Physical Data Modeling
8 Enabling Better Business Intelligence and Information Architecture
© 2014 SAP AG or an SAP afliate company. All rights reserved.
Data Warehouse Modeling
Multidimensional diagrams document the online analytical
processing environments by representing cubes, facts, dimen-
sions, dimensional hierarchies, and queries independent of the
physical table structures used to store the warehouse or data
mart information.
The data mapping editor links the source defnition, warehouse,
mart, and reporting environment together. This provides for
clear impact analysis and design-time change management of
the BI environment. See Figure 4.
Figure 4: Data Warehouse Modeling
SAP PowerDesigner ofers a range of features to help you
manage the fow of information between business and IT
in a single tool and to minimize the time, risk, and cost of
changes to your information architecture.
9 Enabling Better Business Intelligence and Information Architecture
© 2014 SAP AG or an SAP afliate company. All rights reserved.
XML Modeling
XML models support canonical data models and physical XML
structure defnitions. The XML models generate or reverse-
engineer structures for document-type-defnition markup
language and schemas. These models are mapped to data
models to document XML and relational mappings as well
as for defnitions of XML in the database for RDBMS engines
that support this concept. See Figure 5.
Figure 5: XML Modeling
10 Enabling Better Business Intelligence and Information Architecture
© 2014 SAP AG or an SAP afliate company. All rights reserved.
Enterprise Glossary
Centrally managed by the enterprise repository, the enterprise
glossary helps ensure that business terms and defnitions are
established and consistently managed throughout all models.
This enforces consistent naming standards and business lan-
guage alignment and supports data stewardship and gover-
nance eforts.
When used in parallel with the enterprise glossary, the concep-
tual data model in SAP PowerDesigner provides a true data
dictionary. It streamlines communication by ensuring everyone
is ”speaking the same language.” See Figure 6.
Figure 6: Enterprise Glossary Figure 7: Data Movement Modeling
Data Movement Modeling
Exclusive to SAP PowerDesigner, the data movement model
documents all aspects of information movement. Source-data
stores, target-data stores, multiple transformations, publica-
tions, and subscriptions serve to document any ETL, enterprise
information integration, or replication process. See Figure 7.
11 Enabling Better Business Intelligence and Information Architecture
© 2014 SAP AG or an SAP afliate company. All rights reserved.
PUTTING IT ALL TOGETHER
SAP PowerDesigner supports a comprehensive set of data
modeling techniques. The software helps business and IT to
speak the same language, enabling better communication and
alignment between the two. Additionally, the software gives you
strong support for your data governance, BI, data integration,
and data consolidation eforts.
See Figure 8 for a snapshot of all the models that are available
to you with SAP PowerDesigner software.
FIND OUT MORE
To learn more about how SAP PowerDesigner software can
help your organization, call your SAP representative today or
visit us on the Web at www.sap.com/solutions/technology
/database/model-driven-architecture/index.epx.
Figure 8: Data Modeling Techniques Supported by SAP® PowerDesigner® Software
REPOSITORY
Conceptual
data model
BPM
Logical
data model
Requirements
model
Data move-
ment model
XML model
Physical
data model
Replication
defnition
DDL
RDBMS
XML DTD
schema
Forward engineering; Reverse engineering; Round-trip engineering; Import and export
BPM = business process management; DTD = document-type-defnition; DDL = data defnition language
www.sap.com/contactsap
CMP22171 (14/01)
© 2014 SAP AG or an SAP afliate company. All rights reserved.
No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form
or for any purpose without the express permission of SAP AG or an SAP
afliate company.
SAP and other SAP products and services mentioned herein as well as
their respective logos are trademarks or registered trademarks of SAP AG
(or an SAP afliate company) in Germany and other countries. Please seehttp://www.sap.com/corporate-en/legal/copyright/index.epx#trademark
for additional trademark information and notices. Some software
products marketed by SAP AG and its distributors contain proprietary
software components of other software vendors.
National product specifcations may vary.
These materials are provided by SAP AG or an SAP afliate company for
informational purposes only, without representation or warranty of any
kind, and SAP AG or its afliated companies shall not be liable for errors or
omissions with respect to the materials. The only warranties for SAP AG
or SAP afliate company products and services are those that are set
forth in the express warranty statements accompanying such products
and services, if any. Nothing herein should be construed as constituting an
additional warranty.
In particular, SAP AG or its afliated companies have no obligation to
pursue any course of business outlined in this document or any related
presentation, or to develop or release any functionality mentioned therein.
This document, or any related presentation, and SAP AG’s or its afliated
companies’ strategy and possible future developments, products, and/or
platform directions and functionality are all subject to change and may be
changed by SAP AG or its afliated companies at any time for any reason
without notice. The information in this document is not a commitment,
promise, or legal obligation to deliver any material, code, or functionality.
All forward-looking statements are subject to various risks and
uncertainties that could cause actual results to difer materially from
expectations. Readers are cautioned not to place undue reliance on these
forward-looking statements, which speak only as of their dates, and they
should not be relied upon in making purchasing decisions.
doc_629969184.pdf