The YouTube video explains how to import the native PowerDesigner FIB-DM file into ERWin Data Modeler.
We then tour the imported model and examine the extensive Financial Industry Business Ontology documentation on ERWin Subject Areas and Entities.
You can read and print a write-up of the migration instructions here.
Transcript
Hello, this is Jurgen with the Financial Industry Business data model FIB-DM. In this tutorial, “The FIBO in ERWin,” we migrate the native PowerDesigner into the ERWin modeling tool.
We also look at how the import preserves the extensive business documentation as Properties on ERWin Entities and Subject Areas.
Why do we have this tutorial?
More than 3,500 users downloaded the open-source version of FIB-DM. The pie chart shows that most are on PowerDesigner, but quite a few are on other data modeling tools. Many email me and ask, “How do I open FIB-DM in my tool?”
The FIB-UM (Universal Model) website showcases successful FIB-DM migrations. We have Sparx EA, E/R Studio, and now this one here for ERWin. The website has a detailed write-up of the import. When you watch this video, you probably downloaded the FIBO data model already. For my trials with ERWin, I imported both the 1000-entity open source, as well as the Full 3000-entity, commercial version of the model.
And after completing the download form you get the email with the links, and here it’s important, you should use number two here, the native PowerDesigner LDM file for best results importing into ERWin.
So, here we are in ERWin, exactly in ERWin release 14.1.
Let’s start the import. For that, we go to tools, we click on the input. It takes a couple of seconds to launch. That’s a wizard, and we configure the source and destination of the import. Important, the type here should be SAP PowerDesigner LDM. For the location of my source model is here, the CODT directory open-source. Here, you just want to make sure that you have a PowerDesigner LDM file. We do a basic consistency check. These are all default values, we filter binary characters, and very importantly, very nice is, we can import ERWin User-Definedproperties, UDPs. This gives us the whole FIBO documentation. FIBO stores the documentation as so-called ontology Annotation Properties, and the Configurable Ontology to Data model Transformation (CODT) transforms them into PD Extended Attributes, and now the ERWin import reads these PowerDesigner Extended Attributes and creates like-named UDPs for it on Entities and Subject Areas.
We don’t need volumetrics, and we remove text formatting. Whatever reverse role names. So, for the destination, I just say where I want to put it. I chose an ERWin model. Here is also the other import that I tried out for the Full model, which, as you can see, is a lot bigger than the Core. So, I pick the override and I launch the import. Now, and here we can see the import running and this takes a while, so let’s start the timer.
We get back in in two minutes.
It took a little over a minute for our import to complete successfully. So, we can close the timer and the import dialog, and ERWin will open the newly created model. Here we have our imported model, the FIB-DM Core LDM ERWin file. On the left-hand side the model explorer. The first thing we want to validate the model statistics. For that, we click on the object count, and we see it has created 261 subject areas, 1,082 entities, and there almost 2,400 relationships. Now, the dialog here says “there are no model-level diagrams nothing to show.” This is because all diagrams in FIB-DM are on the Subject Area level.
We can open the Subject Areas. Let’s see here, look at Agreements, switch to that package. Here, it shows the out-of-the-box layout of that subject area diagram. I think ERWin does a pretty good rendition of the PowerDesigner original. We can do a little work, change the diagram level to Entities, realign some relationships, and so on.
Let’s look at the FIBO documentation. The Subject Areas, the imported Subject Areas in ERWin. They all ultimately derive from FIBO ontologies, the 261 RDF ontology files in their folder structure. If we examine one of the subject areas, the Agreements, we can see the UDPs, the User Defined Properties. These here, on the left side, are all the imported PowerDesigner Extended Attributes, and they ultimately come from FIBO ontology Annotation Properties. As you can see, there are quite a lot of them, and they are not populated for all Subject Areas. Every Subject Area has an Abstract, and every Subject Area has a License. But often they wouldn’t need Explanatory Note or History Note, and so on. This one here has a change note, and it has some attributes about the language.
Here, important the Copyright and Dependencies, and here this Abbreviation. This is the actually from the ontology, the hierarchy structure. These are just acronyms here for Foundation, Agreements, Agreements. We have the ontology File Name, and here, very nicely, we have the URI. This link here directly points into the FIBO. One word here about the Copyright and License notes: You see the copyrights from the Object Management Group, EDM Council, and Jayzed Data Models. And as well you see the License UDP, which shows the open-source MIT and GPL licenses. This is an open source license requirement. For any Derived Works from your ERWin model, in other words, if you copy entities into a new model, if you generate a physical model or copy the metadata into any other software, you must preserve these License and Copyright notes. You don’t have to create UDPs. You can put them in the Definition tab or General tab, but somewhere in your derived work, there must be the copyright and license notes.
Let’s look at the entities. The first thing you notice is that some entities are yellow and others are blue. That’s a FIB-DM diagramming convention. The Obligor in yellow – that’s a Base Entity derived from a FIBO Class., Here, “has Obligation” -that’s an Associative Entity derived from a FIBO Object Property. It reads here, “The Obligor has an obligation that can either be a Commitment or it can be a payment obligation.”
Okay, now let’s look at the Obligor entity Properties. Just like it was with the Subject Areas, there a bunch of possible User Defined Properties on entities, but not all are populated for every entity. Some of them
will have a Synonym. They all will have a Label, basically an English word in the FIBO for that Class. And they all will have either an SKOS Definition or some would have an RDFS Comment. Down here, these are basically technical attributes that are very useful, I would say specifically for the Physical Modeler. First of all, you have a Resource Name, a complete unique identifier which comprises of a Prefix, basically the
uh ontology module. Ontology hierarchy: So, here we have FIBO Foundation-Agreements-Agreements.
And then it has a Local Name, which is the English name for the class. Now, this here is very helpful. Let me copy it. This entity URI is a direct link into the FIBO. So, if I paste this into my browser, it takes me to the class definition on the EDM Council FIBO website. This provides the lineage from your data model to the ontology. It’s the traceability, and that is helpful if you also work with the ontology now or in the future.
It preserves the the the linkage between the two worlds.
Okay, now also here the Resource Type corresponds to the colors in the diagram. If it’s a Base Entity you will see, it’s derived from an OWL class. It may of an Object Property and that means this is an Associative Entity.
Some classes have a Restriction. This is an RDF-OWL construct. If you dissect this in more detail, you will find these are Business Rules. Rules that go beyond what we can do as data modelers in PowerDesigner or ERWin. The ontology has a higher semantic. Here, it can restrict what are legal instances of the Ontology Class. This is very helpful for DBAs developers because they can implement these business rules if they need, be it as a Trigger or it in the application.
Yeah, let’s look at the latest Full Model 2024/Q4 and if take a look at the object count, we see that we imported 3,016 entities and over 7,600 relationships. Just a remark about the diagram convention in FIB-DM. I want to take a look at Mortgages. I laid out this diagram a little bit, and this is just following the um the FIB-DM conventions. It looks pretty close to the original. First, we switch it to the entity level display, we adapt the colors, and we straighten out relationship lines. We can compare it to the FIB-DM diagram, you find this on the FIB-DM website. Here are Loan diagrams,
and let me scroll down to Mortgages which is here. You can see it it uh it looks pretty close. Now here we have the stamp and we have the original.
Okay, conclusion and references:
The migration of the PowerDesigner FIBO Data Model into ERWin is quite easy.
I want to say special thanks to Robert from Sandhill Consultants. They tried out the FIB-DM import first, and also provided me with a copy of the ERWin software.
So, here you can find a write-up with screenshots on the FIB Universal Model website. And on the data model website FIB-DM, I recommend the diagrams, the Full Model entity list report, and of course, you should
Check out how to upgrade from the Open Source to the Full Data Model.
Well, thank you for watching.