Data Architecture - from Requirements to implementation with SAP PowerDesigner

[GeorgeMcGeachie]

Yesterday, I broadcast a webinar on the DAMA UK channel on Bright Talk.

The webinar description was :

“To be successful at Data Architecture, organisations have always needed to understand what data they have, why they have it, how they use it, where it is, how it got there, and what happened to it along the way – forming a ‘pipeline’ of information. Very often, this pipeline is managed and documented using a mish-mash of tools and methodologies, often resulting in conflicting and contradictory information, making it difficult for Data Governance to be effective.
In this webcast, George McGeachie will demonstrate the key features of SAP PowerDesigner that support the pipeline. A set of requirements and business rules, and an existing Conceptual Data Model, will be used to create Logical and Physical Data Models. This will include the generation of JSON structures from both Logical and Physical Data Models.
Some of what you will see is not out-of-the-box – it has been built using PowerDesigner’s powerful customisation features.”

The webinar was recorded – take a look – https://www.brighttalk.com/webcast/12405/311023

 

Here's a summary of what I covered:

Import Requirements from a Mind Map – Via OPML and a Word document – then create a Conceptual Data Model (CDM) from the Requirements. The OPML import was built by me using the PowerDesigner XML Import feature, and the Word import is part of the product.

Merge this CDM into the existing Hotel Loyalty CDM

Generate LDM from the CDM
The LDM has a couple of model extensions attached – one of them generates JSON and CSV, and the other generates facts about the model as text. Both involved writing some Generation Template Language, which allows me to mix boilerplate text and information from the model, in much the same way as when we generate Data Definition Language (as SQL) from a Physical Data Model.

Generate JSON PDM from LDM, then generate SQL Server PDM from LDM
In the LDM, I could now see (though I didn’t show this at the time) the links from the LDM to the objects in the PDM.

Use the Mapping editor to create mappings from the JSON model to the SQL Server model

Load the JSON-SQL mappings into a Data Movement Model
The Data Movement Model already contains some detailed data movements for MDM and a Data Warehouse:
I used the built-in wizard to import the mappings from the SQL Server PDM, and create a single transformation task in the model. I also showed an alternative view of the Data Warehouse Data Architecture, in an Enterprise Architecture Model, which is linked to the Data Movement Model.

Finally, I created a Project, and added all the models to it, so we can visualise the links between models. each symbol on this diagram represents one of the models. I can open a model by double-clicking the symbol. Then I showed the Impact and Lineage analysis for one of the tables in the JSON PDM and clicked on the ‘Generate Diagram’ button, which created an Impact Analysis Model from the above analysis.

After the webinar, I reran it on my blog, in the form of text and a load of screenshots. So if you want to see all the text and the screen shots, please go to https://metadatajunkie.wordpress.com/2018/03/22/thanks-to-every-one-who-joined-my-powerdesigner-webi...