PowerDesigner

SAP PowerDesigner (PowerDesigner) is a collaborative enterprise modelling tool produced by Sybase, currently owned by SAP. PowerDesigner runs under Microsoft Windows as a native application, and runs under Eclipse through a plugin. PowerDesigner supports model-driven architecture software design. PowerDesigner stores models using a variety of file extensions, such as .bpm, .cdm and .pdm. The internal file structure can be either XML or a compressed binary file format. PowerDesigner can also store models in a database repository.

PowerDesigner data modeling tool market share in 2002 was 39%. PowerDesigner is priced from $3,000 to $7,500 USD per developer seat.

PowerDesigner includes support for:

PowerDesigner started life as AMC*Designor in France and S-Designor internationally, which was written by Xiao-Yun Wang of SDP Technologies. The "or" in the product name refers to "Oracle", since initially the product was developed to design Oracle databases, but very quickly evolved to support all major RDBMS in the market. SDP Technologies was a French company that was started in 1983. Powersoft purchased SDP in 1995, and Sybase had purchased Powersoft earlier in 1994. Shortly after the acquisition, the product was renamed to be consistent with the Powersoft brand. Sybase currently owns all rights to PowerDesigner and PowerAMC (the French version of PowerDesigner). In May 2010, SAP announced that it would be acquiring Sybase for $5.8 billion.

The data modeling features of the French and English editions were originally following 2 different methodologies: Merise for PowerAMC and IE/Information engineering (based on Yourdon / DeMarco works) for PowerDesigner. Since version 7, both editions support all methodologies and only differ from their user language. From v16.6 onwards, both Edition are called PowerDesigner and are delivered in a single installer.