EAM: is there an easier way to organize numerous diagrams ?

[Former Member]

Hello,

In a EAM describing (amongst other topics) hundreds of applications, I need to create one or several diagrams to describe them.

The default way to manage them in Power Designer will put all of these hundreds of diagrams at the root of the model, which will be really not user friendly.

As, in a EAM, we cannot create a Folder, the current only way to properly organize them is to manage Packages, for example, one by application.

But using a Package inside a Model generates a lot of Shortcuts, which are indeed not necessary and only a constraint imposed by the tool.

This really increases the complexity of this model (for search and maintenance purpose) and thus generates a risk of global consistency loss.

Do you know any other way to manage this in an easier way and without generating additional shortcuts ?

Otherwise, is there anything planned in the next PwD releases to cope with this real concern ?

Thanks

[Former Member]

When using packages, you should only need shortcuts where the objects are referenced across the packages.  In other words, if I have 50 objects, 25 in each package, but one object from Package A is referenced (application link, trace-ability link, etc) by an object in Package B, there is a shortcut needed in Package A for the object in package B to manage the cross-package dependency.

Do you know if all the shortcuts that you had after converting to packages were managing such dependencies?

If the object sets are mostly independent, then too many shortcuts should not be needed.  If there is a high inter-dependency between lots of objects in lots of packages, then there will be a higher number of shortcuts.

[Former Member]

Hi David,

I don't know yet how many shortcuts will have to be managed. But Shortcuts is a concept which is still confusing for a basic and not "intensive" PowerDesigner user.

My purpose is to be able to manage directories, just like in a Windows explorer, and store application description in each of them. This would make the use of my EAM model more intuitive and user friendly. But if this imposes me to manage hundreds of shortcuts, this would cancel all the benefit I expect from such a directory organization...

Maybe I'm not the first to raise such concern about complex models organizations...

[GeorgeMcGeachie]

It would be nice if we could have diagram folders in a model or package. I've seen models with 70 diagrams; I wouldn't recommend having that many, but even 10 diagrams can really get in the way in the browser.