From ontology to data model, using the PowerDesigner glossary

The Glossary is one of the key enterprise resources provided by SAP PowerDesigner – it helps you capture and manage the terminology to be used when naming your models and objects in your models.

What if you want to use your Glossary in a different way – as an ontology? What if you want to use the Glossary to generate content in your models?

That’s exactly what I was asked recently – the good news is that PowerDesigner is designed to be extended. We can meet our objective in several ways:

• write a script – Design and build all the logic yourself
• define a simple ‘Object Generation’ – Simple to set up, limited in scope
• define an ‘Extended Object Generation’ – Simple to set up, will need some scripting to tailor the results

I created a couple of demonstrations for my client, and decided to share them with the world via YouTube.

This video has three parts:

• the Introduction at 00:22
• a demonstration of the capabilities of a script at 06:21
• a demonstration of Object Generation and Extended Object Generation at 08:48.