SAP PowerDesigner is a unique tool with superior performance, delivering broad functionality right out of-the-box. In combination with its extensive support for extensions and customisations there are literally no boundaries of what can be achieved with the tool. Our experts are ready to help you to tailor the tool functionality to your specific needs.
While SAP PowerDesigner is a perfect tool for modelling DWH, Datamarts, ODS etc., it misses native support for Exasol database. Therefore, customers of Exasol, who often used to work with PowerDesigner had to face this disadvantage and look for some alternatives.
But hey, great news! We have decided to combine these two awesome technologies and integrate with each other, so you can now leverage the best DB modelling tool on the market with the fastest in-memory database. That’s a winning combination!
Being an official partner of both vendors: SAP and Exasol, it guarantees our expertise and commitment to such integrations. We are as flexible as possible and passionate to work with customers of all sizes. We can deliver either the whole package: Exasol DB, SAP PowerDesigner and our PD Plugin for Exasol, but can as well do just partial delivery of any of these components, based on your current needs. Just get in touch with us and we can find the best licensing model for you.
We understand that the techniques of use of a modelling tool is quite different across the customer base, with various development approaches. Hence, we have prepared the Plugin to support you in almost any of modelling approaches you have in place.
The plugin is designed to be compatible with all the officially supported versions of both Exasol and SAP PowerDesigner. After it’s easy implementation it appears in the list among other officially supported RDBMS within PowerDesigner and it’s ready to be use, just like any other database.
The plugin adds missing support for Exasol RDBMS in SAP PowerDesigner around the most used functionalities. In terms of regular modelling of Physical models, plugin fully supports all the objects usually required to define and create a model.
Of course, such model can be afterwards exported as SQL file consisting of DDL definitions, or to directly apply the changes to the database, based on the preference. The functionality includes for example:
can be either skipped completely, and let Exasol create them automatically, or define at least some most important ones in the model and include the enforced index creation thru the exported DDL script.
The plugin allows for effective reverse engineering of an existing Exasol database. This comes very handy during migrations, or when comparing the model versus what is really implemented in a database. Specifically, for Exasol we have added support for reversing of whatever Exasol offers: partition by, distribution key, virtual schemas, sizes of objects, scripts, UDF, etc. Moreover, to improve the default behaviour of PD, we are not throwing everything into one basket. Instead, we are separating each Exasol database schema into its own package and create a separate model diagram for each. It really helps to keep things organized, eases model readability and identification of objects, but on the other hand, does not limit the developer in cooperation with other objects. This can be adjusted to your specific needs, based on the database design. For example, each schema can be reversed as a separate model.
Reverse engineering process is fully configurable using numerous filters. We are adding a special functionality, to identify proper schema for an object (missing in default PD overview), hence you are free to filter by schemas, owners, object types etc.
Pic.: Reverse engineered Exasol database into 5 packages – for each schema. Easily expandable and explorable, with it’s own diagram and associated objects for each.
Exasol support only small number of datatypes. This is great for performance, but it limits the developer in his habit of using large variety of human-readable datatypes, well known from some other RDBMS. To combine both benefits, we have added support for the datatype conversion, which has almost no limits. Whatever datatypes of any RDMBS you prefer, or are used to, it can be used during modelling for Exasol. The plugin allows developers to definite those human friendly data types during object creation, while during the DDL generation it transparently converts it accordingly into those known and supported by Exasol. It is being defined once, can be updated eventually, so by nature it’s basically without any maintenance, users just do not have to worry about datatypes anymore. They don’t even have to remember which are officially supported by Exasol, as the plugin does the job for them.
Example of some suggested conversions:
The list can be fully adjusted and populated to meet your needs.
Pic.: Automatic and transparent conversion of easily readable datatypes into those supported by Exasol on table Preview, but also during DDL generation – both into a sql script file, and for direct generation into the database.
To ease the modelling process, we have added some extra functionality also to one level above table properties, into the model diagram itself. It allows for identification of important parameters even without having to open any object and browse it’s properties. You can find it visually separated right at the bottom of each object on the diagram.
The content currently shows the following parameters, but it can be fully adjusted to your needs, to show whatever is relevant for you:
For tables:
For views:
Source tables, incl. schema definition
Pic.: Extended attributes for Tables and Views directly shown in the diagram overview.
For the string datatypes CHAR and VARCHAR Exasol supports two charsets: ASCII, and UTF8. Choosing wrong one can be sometimes difficult to fix. Therefore, we are able to highlight the important charset attributes based on your specific needs. For example, if you prefer to use UTF8, this charset will be hidden at all string datatypes. But whenever there is any column defined with ASCII charset, we can highlight it where possible: Diagram, Preview, Comment, etc.
Except of the plugin itself, we also provide additional services for customers to help them to speed up their modelling processes, to develop more efficiently and keep their models organized and standardized. These services are based on our rich experience and best practices from various markets, gathered over the years. It might include services like: Methodology preparation, Custom checks, Mapping, Bulk table creation, Bulk comment adjustment, Data Assessment, Master Data management, Data Governance, or our unique Metadata Portal.
Should you have any questions, feel free to reach out to us, we would love to hear from you about how you would like to combine PowerDesigner with Exasol in your organisation.
