Sybase Powerdesigner for Information Architecture

White Paper

Sybase PowerDesigner for information architecture

A White Paper by Bloor Research Authors : David Norfolk & Philip Howard Publish date : March 2012 Sybase PowerDesigner is one of the leading modelling tools in the market and the introduction of IA capabilities in version 16 makes it a strong candidate for enabling information architecture

David Norfolk Sybase PowerDesigner for information architecture …bringing business and technology together

Executive summary

Automated business services are, ultimately, In this paper we will consider the need for, built on data; but, more than that, on data that and benefits of, implementing information we understand. That is, information is data architecture and we will discuss how Sybase that is understood in both business and techni PowerDesigner, Version 16, enables that pro cal terms. cess. Briefly, Sybase PowerDesigner has 20+ years history of providing modelling support Understanding data requires not only a know for database design and has more recently in ledge of its semantics (what the pieces of troduced support for enterprise architecture. data actually mean) and structure (entities, With version 16 the company has added a focus relationships between them and allowed on information architecture, which introduces values) but also knowledge of how it is used. a set of information architecture models for a So, information architecture (IA) provides a range of stakeholders from data analysts to documented framework that includes your business analysts around a single metadata data; the technical metadata that describes repository. Its ‘Link and Synch’ facility keeps it and is used in building databases and data all the models in synch, regardless of which access systems; and which encapsulates your one a particular stakeholder feels comfort knowledge of how this is (or should be) used. able with updating, without compromising the individual models with inappropriate data. For An information architecture is thus useful for example, a logical model is transformed into enabling business decision-making; and for a new physical model and the data needed building technology that supports these deci for physical implementation is added during sions and is in line with the strategic policies transformation, instead of cluttering the logi of the business as to how its data/information cal model up with inappropriate physical in will be used. Moreover, it can be used to give formation, thus enabling logical designers and regulators confidence that the business un analysts and physical implementers to work derstands its information assets and has ap efficiently with appropriate visualisations. propriate governance policies in place. The benefit of using such a tool is that it ena More formally, the Information Architecture bles an efficient IA process around useful IA Institute (http://iainstitute.org/en/about/) de modelling, which, in turn, enables better in fines IA as dealing with: formation governance in the organisation and better alignment of technology, business sys • The structural design of shared information tems and executive management policies and environments. strategy. However, IA modelling also delivers a more immediately tangible benefit, in that • The art and science of organising and label it satisfies some of the compliance require ling web sites, intranets, online communi ments of regulations such as Solvency II and ties and software to support usability and Dodd-Frank. findability.

• An emerging community of practice focused on bringing principles of design and archi tecture to the digital landscape.

In detail this means that modelling IA should help an organisation reduce the costs associ ated with finding or not finding information; and manage the cost of using information and of building and managing information systems. However, controlling costs isn’t the only objec tive: probably more important is using IA to help the organisation to achieve value from the recognition and promotion of employee and customer education; the creation of effec tive knowledge networks; and from brand strengthening and the promotion of innovation (business process optimisation).

What is IA and why is it valuable?

Richard Saul Wurman, the architect and In detail, you could expect a properly managed graphic designer who created TED conferences and supported IA initiative to deliver: and probably introduced the term “Information Architect”, describes architecture in terms • Good governance of an organisation’s in of using systemic, structural, and orderly formation assets, so that they can be used principles in order to make things work. The efficiently in support of business outcomes. primary success metric for architecture is that it should be useful—and used—not something • Better communication of this good govern admired in an ivory tower. ance to regulators (regulations, for exam ple, Solvency II, are increasingly demanding What this means, in the context of enterprise evidence of good data governance) and other business systems automation, is that IA is a external stakeholders. subset of enterprise architecture (as defined by architecture frameworks such as TOGAF • Better communication between technolo [The Open Group Architecture Framework]) gists and the business, leading to better that describes an organisation’s information staff morale and wider and better (more assets. It extends from data analysis (data cost effective) exploitation of technology by architecture) at one end, to the modelling of the business. business information flows at the other, and uses modelling to help all stakeholders in au • Better automated business systems tomated business processes to come together designs and fewer production problems in managing the complexity of the automated caused by mismatches between business business. It helps everyone understand the information and what is stored in the organi information and how it fits into the organisa sation’s databases. tion’s information assets as a whole. IA modelling is a business optimisation pro IA helps an organisation manage the cost of cess, which must be directed by senior man making company information available in a agement strategy and policy. It is not simply timely way wherever it can be used to make about buying a tool, although good tools are the business operate more effectively. It helps probably essential to facilitating IA modelling an organisation manage the resources used in and removing barriers to adoption. An organi information management and ensures that its sation should attempt to define an IA strategy, data resources are fully exploited. at least at a high level, and identify the benefits it derives from an IA modelling process, before However, more than this, it can (with the help choosing suitable tools. The organisation will of sufficient management buy-in and initia also need to think about whether it wants to tive) help to foster ‘knowledge culture’, which adopt a single product across all modelling do fosters innovation and removes organisational mains or use several best of breed tools (at the silos. Information is the lingua franca of an lower end, there are many commoditised data organisation and it can help both technology analysis and DBA tools; at the top end there and business practitioners to collaborate on are some specialised and well-respected EA the attainment of business outcomes. tools), perhaps using the IA models to help link everything together. The former approach is less complex but it may mean compromising on some capabilities in some areas.

IA functionality requirements

General enabling functionality in conjunction with this use of the Internal Model. It is also worth noting that the forthcom A model-driven approach to building auto ing MiFID II regulation uses exactly the same mated business systems should bring all wording as Solvency II and that the UK’s FSCS stakeholders together. This implies support regulations have similar implications. Histori for a wide range of modelling and visualisation cally, most regulations (Sarbanes-Oxley, for techniques, the ability to import and use any example) have been more about process than existing information assets, and external APIs the accuracy of data. It is the opinion of Bloor so that IA information assets can be reused Research that this will increasingly change to in other systems. The more that IA can be put a greater emphasis on data quality. embedded in the business and development process, the more likely its assets are up-to- Dodd-Frank is a large and complex set of reg date, trusted, and used. ulations that covers banking, insurance and mortgage lending as well as more abstruse The justification of a structured IA process areas such as mine safety, conflict materials over ad-hoc and arbitrary documentation is and the acquisition of licenses for mineral and automated QA. The IA models need to repre oil and gas rights. We do not intend to go into sent ‘a single version of the truth’ for the busi detail about its requirements, so a couple of ness, so you want automated completeness examples will have to suffice to give a flavour and consistency checks and you want models of the requirements set out in the act: that are coherent at whatever level (concep tual, logical, physical) they operate at. So, you • The Financial Stability Oversight Council want to be able to transform models automati may require any bank or non-bank financial cally, one into another, adding implementa institution with assets over $50 billion to tion details (say) as you move from logical to submit certified reports as to: physical, instead of, perhaps, cluttering up a clean logical model with lots of complicated »» The financial condition of the company implementation stuff. »» The systems in place to monitor and con Security, access control and usability are also trol any risks important, because, in a real sense, you’ll want to run your business from your IA process. »» The transactions with subsidiaries that You’ll use your IA process to promote business are regulated banks agility, so you’ll also need support for change management, impact analyses and so forth. »» The extent to which any of the company’s activities could have a potentially disrup Regulatory requirements tive impact on financial markets or the overall financial stability of the country An immediate ROI from IA is its facilitation of regulatory compliance, if appropriate. Since • NRSROs (nationally recognised statistical non-compliance may put you out of business, rating organisations) are required to estab and certainly affects an organisation’s repu lish, maintain, enforce and document an ef tation, using IA for compliance can help with fective internal control structure governing adoption (although it’s not a good idea to focus the implementation of, and adherence to, purely on compliance, as IA provides, poten policies, procedures and methodologies for tially, more value than this). determining credit ratings. There are also rules relating to the fact that NRSROs must Two regulations particularly relevant to IA are be able to demonstrate that their ratings Solvency II and Dodd-Frank. In the case of the are not influenced by sales and marketing former, insurance companies implementing and the compliance officer’s remuneration their own Internal Model are required to use must not be linked to the company’s finan data that is “accurate, complete and appropri cial performance. ate”. Moreover, the organisation has to prove that its model is being used within the business As can be seen, all of these regulations are on a regular basis. In effect, the EU (and other about the provision of data and, as such, lend states examining a similar approach) is requir themselves to an approach, based on IA, that ing companies to implement data governance puts this data into the appropriate context.

IA functionality requirements

Tooling requirements In addition, it should provide or facilitate:

In order to facilitate and encourage adoption of • Enterprise architectural modelling IA, your IA tools should support: • Requirements modelling • A strong role-based security/access control model • Business process modelling using BPMN

• A logically centralised metadata reposi • Systems Design using UML tory, with a physical implementation that scales well • Database design using E/R modelling and DDL for standard industry databases • Conceptual data modelling • The design of external web interfaces to • Logical data modelling company systems

• Physical data modelling • Impact analyses

• Data movement modelling, with EL support Ideally, your IA tools should also be part of a rich partner community or ecosystem, some • XML hierarchy modelling what independent of the tool vendor.

• Automated completeness and consistency checking

• Structured model transformations and model synchronisation

• Import/export facilities for other information assets (particularly for Visio diagrams and Word and Excel documents)

• Most importantly, IA should provide a structured vocabulary or glossary (ideally, including taxonomy, ontology and semantic modelling) of the precise meanings of terms used by technologists and business users.

How PowerDesigner meets the needs of IA

Sybase PowerDesigner is an architectural PowerDesigner meets these needs well: modelling tool, originally developed by a French company, SDP Technologies, to support • It supports a wide range of diagramming Oracle database design and then developed notations: traditional E/R (Enterprise/ further to handle most Enterprise DBMSs. It Relationship) data modelling; BPMN (Busi was acquired by Powersoft, which was bought ness Process Management Notation), UML by Sybase, and they have taken PowerDesigner (Unified Modelling Language) and more. higher in the stack, so that it now encompasses both IA and EA. This extended provenance con • It supports import-export to Visio and other firms thatPowerDesigner is a mature product. Office tools and includes thin client (web- based) access and web-based authoring Sybase’s marketing message for (which requires an extra, optional, Portal PowerDesigner is that it supports a full Composer license), so it should integrate spectrum of capabilities that range from data well and non-intrusively with Office-based architecture and database design (where it business environments. originated but which is now becoming com moditised) through to enterprise architecture • It has facilities for impact analysis, gap (EA). Realistically, it caters for organisations analysis, change management and so on, that already understand database design which can deliver immediate benefits to the and data modelling but want to move up a business and encourage buy-in to the mod level into logical information modelling and elling approach. an architectural approach—but may find enterprise architecture approaches a little • It provides global, role-based access (with a daunting. It will also attract the more sophis good security model) to a (logically) central ticated IT professionals seeking to align IT ised metadata repository and its associated more closely to the business and even busi diagrams. ness analysts who want to remove organi sational silos. Sybase claims that its IA and • It has an active user community including EA licenses represent 50% of both sales and user groups and a LinkedIn group; and good support renewals; and that licence sales are support, including training. 35% to new customers, which seems to say that its marketing model works. One important aspect of model-driven ap proaches to business automation, including In terms of functionality, an IA tool needs to IA, is that they need to be embedded in the support whatever the stakeholders in IA find culture of the organisation employing them. useful to the visualisation of information, not This means removing barriers to entry with just the diagrams technologists like; and it trial licences and even SaaS options. While needs to facilitate the reuse of existing IA Sybase offers trial licences for PowerDesigner assets such as Word documents and Visio we would like to see the company introduce diagrams and produce output for business a SaaS option, which might be attractive for managers in office-productivity formats. It smaller companies and for proofs of concept. also needs to deliver immediate benefit in the short term and have a good security model.

How PowerDesigner meets the needs of IA

Product architecture and physical data models, hierarchical XML models and data movement models loosely PowerDesigner has a centralised metadata but effectively coupled. Business process, and repository supporting a wide range of different requirements models, outside of the IA space, model types; in the IA space these include busi can be kept even more loosely synchronised ness process models; conceptual, logical and with an import-export process. The physi physical data models; data movement models cal libraries, which actually implement the for ETL and replication; XML models and others. systems and derive directly from the physi cal models—XML schemas, data definition A key feature of PowerDesigner is its ‘Link and language (DDL) for databases and replication Sync’ approach. This ensures that the various control definitions—are synchronised using models that describe an organisation’s archi round trip engineering. tecture are appropriately synchronised with out the users of these models having to do this It is important to have these three different manually. Without automated synchronisation, synchronisation approaches so as to maintain parts of the overall conceptual model of the appropriate governance of the environment organisation will become out of date relative for its various users—importing from the to other parts of the model and the real world requirements model and exporting changes, outside. If this happens, users will rapidly lose for example, allows requirements analysts to trust in the model (even in those parts of the manage changes to their separate models; model that are actually up-to-date) and mod whereas if the organisation is to have one elling will fall into disuse. single source of the truth, implementation libraries can’t ever be allowed to get out of Link and Sync is illustrated in Figure 1. synch with the model - so round trip engineer Forward and reverse engineering is used ing means that you can make changes either to keep the main IA models automatically to the implementation library or the model and synchronised: this keeps conceptual, logical the result is the same.

Figure 1: Overview of Link and Sync

How PowerDesigner meets the needs of IA

Differentiators Complementary products

Sybase, as part of SAP, has strong provenance Sybase PowerDesigner has a strong partner and financial stability; and PowerDesigner is community and tool bridges for (for example): an established tool. Its IA tools should support (with the aid of 3rd party technologies such • Business process (typically ARIS) as Silwood Technology’s Saphir product) SAP development and migration particularly well. • UML (typically Rational/Sparx)

PowerDesigner has a particularly strong Link • Data (typically Oracle Designer) and Synch technology, to keep models in synchronisation. • Simul8 business process model simulation capabilities Although Sybase (realistically) recognises that DBA tools are becoming commoditised • Metadata import from SAP and Oracle ap and that there are specialised EA tools at the plications (eBusiness Suite, PeopleSoft, high end of the market, PowerDesigner can, J D Edwards and Siebel) via Silwood in practice, span the entire space from data Technologies’ Saphir product, and support architecture to enterprise architecture and for data & component architecture models should integrate well with 3rd-party tools at from these applications those extremes. • IT planning and EA management reporting capabilities with Troux & alfabet

Conclusion

Recent financial crises have set the pendulum By anybody’s standards Sybase PowerDesigner swinging back towards increased regulation is one of the leading modelling tools in the and governance. At the same time, increased market and the introduction of IA capabilities business sophistication (and a new realisation in version 16 makes it a strong candidate for that, in reality, “the business runs on soft enabling information architecture, with a ware”) has resulted in a business imperative to strong provenance and some particularly use take ownership and control of its technology. ful features. It is an architectural modelling tool which meets the needs of an organisa In Bloor Research’s opinion, this means that tion that wants to implement an effective IA the time is right for information architecture practice. The tool has an impressive pedigree and the other associated architectural ini and its strengths in the IA space are its “Link tiatives (Business, Application and Technology and Sync” facility (to keep different models in Architecture make up, with information archi synch), its wide range of interfaces to other tecture, Enterprise Architecture). information tools, and its targeting of a wide range of architecture modelling helps to bridge the stakeholders from data analysts to business gap between business and technology, helps analysts and even business management. to align technology systems with business PowerDesigner also supports Enterprise strategy and policy, and last but not least, is Architecture modelling if and when needed. necessary for an organisation to demonstrate compliance with the latest regulations. Further Information

Bloor Research also believes that effective IA Further information is available from tools are necessary to lower the barriers to the http://www.BloorResearch.com/update/2125 adoption of IA, to minimise disruption of the organisation’s existing culture and to ensure that IA modelling is “efficient”- that is, that re sources are mostly devoted to identifying and addressing business and technology issues, not to drawing models and entering metadata.

Bloor Research is one of Europe’s leading IT David Norfolk research, analysis and consultancy organisa Practice Leader tions. We explain how to bring greater Agil Focus Area: Development/Governance ity to corporate IT systems through the effec tive governance, management and leverage David’s early career involved working in data of Information. We have built a reputation for base administration (DBA) and operations ‘telling the right story’ with independent, in research for the Australian Public Service telligent, well-articulated communications in Canberra. David then returned to his UK content and publications on all aspects of the birthplace (1982) where he worked for Bank of ICT industry. We believe the objective of telling America and Swiss Bank Corporation, at various times holding positions the right story is to: in DBA, systems development method and standards, internal control, network management, technology risk and even PC support. He was • Describe the technology in context to its instrumental in introducing a formal systems development process for business value and the other systems and the Bank of America Global Banking product in Croydon. processes it interacts with. In 1992 he started a new career as a professional writer and analyst. • Understand how new and innovative tech Since then he has written for many major computer magazines and vari nologies fit in with existing ICT invest ous specialist titles around the world. He helped plan, document and ments. photograph the CMMI Made Practical conference at the IoD, London in 2005 and has written many industry white papers and research reports • Look at the whole market and explain all including: IT Governance (for Thorogood), Online Banking (for FT Busi the solutions available and how they can be ness Reports), Developing a Network Computing Strategy and Corpo more effectively evaluated. rate Desktop Services (for Business Intelligence), the Business Implica tions of Adopting Object Technology (for Elan Publishing). • Filter “noise” and make it easier to find the additional information or news that sup Philip Howard ports both investment and implementation. Research Director - Data Management

• Ensure all our content is available through Philip started in the computer industry way back the most appropriate channel. in 1973 and has variously worked as a systems analyst, programmer and salesperson, as well Founded in 1989, we have spent over two dec as in marketing and product management, for ades distributing research and analysis to IT a variety of companies including GEC Marconi, user and vendor organisations throughout GPT, Philips Data Systems, Raytheon and NCR. the world via online subscriptions, tailored research services, events and consultancy After a quarter of a century of not being his own boss Philip set up his projects. We are committed to turning our own company in 1992 and his first client was Bloor Research (then knowledge into business value for you. ButlerBloor), with Philip working for the company as an associate ana lyst. His relationship with Bloor Research has continued since that time and he is now Research Director focused on Data Management.

Data management refers to the management, movement, governance and storage of data and involves diverse technologies that include (but are not limited to) databases and data warehousing, data integration (including ETL, data migration and data federation), data quality, master data management, metadata management and log and event manage ment. Philip also tracks spreadsheet management and complex event processing. Copyright & disclaimer

Due to the nature of this material, numerous hardware and software products have been mentioned by name. In the majority, if not all, of the cases, these product names are claimed as trademarks by the compa nies that manufacture the products. It is not Bloor Research’s intent to claim these names or trademarks as our own. Likewise, company logos, graphics or screen shots have been reproduced with the consent of the owner and are subject to that owner’s copyright.

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