10 Reasons to Select Visible Analyst©

1. Combines Data, Process, and Object Modeling in one easy-to-use tool so you save money on tool purchases and reduce developer learning curve.
2. Extensible Repository so you can expand Visible Analyst to meet your requirements
3. Reverse Engineers Legacy Databases so you can quickly and accurately preserve valuable legacy assets.
4. Generates DDL Scripts for Schemas, Tables, Views, RI Triggers, Stored Procedures, Table Space so you save time and increase product quality by automating common development tasks.
5. Collaborative Team Development Environment so critical design information can be shared across teams, departments, or the enterprise.
6. Ensures Model Consistency, Integrity and Quality so you have accurate, consistent models of enterprise information.
7. Comprehensive Reporting so you can effectively communicate analysis and design information.
8. Multi-Level Design so you can manage enterprise information from requirements through implementation.
9. Generates Business Applications From Your Data Model - Automatically so you can quickly transform your data models into business applications.
10. Features for Power Users so you can maximize developer performance within your tool budget.

Visible Analyst is the only integrated application development tool that supports all of the most widely used analysis and design techniques:

• UML: class, use case, sequence, collaboration, and action diagrams
• Data Models: supports conceptual, logical and physical database design; use any of the popular diagramming notations
• Process Models: decomposition charts, structure charts, and data flow diagrams

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A powerful and flexible repository is always included with Visible Analyst – you do not need to purchase a separate repository product. You can add new attributes, objects, and relationships to the Visible Analyst repository. You can also extend the definition of standard repository objects giving you the power to define your own corporate meta data. For example, you can:

• Define new objects to capture business requirements
• Relate requirements to other repository objects (tables, fields, process, etc.)
• Add attribute to identify owner
• Use Analyst's built-in matrix reporting tool to track requirements against other object

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Visible Analyst offers a complete, robust reverse-engineering process from these sources:

• Directly from legacy database using native DBMS or ODBC connection to legacy database. A wide variety of DBMS products are supported (Oracle, SQL Server, DB2, Informix, Sybase, etc.)
• SQL DDL script
• COBOL data division (when combined with Analyst's COBOL reverse engineering utility)
• ERWin file import/export

Tables, views, relationships, domains (user defined types), stored procedures, constraints, triggers, and table space information are extracted from the legacy database and imported. Analyst will infer the foreign keys to find relationships not expressly defined in the database. Analyst also infers subtype and supertype relationships.

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Visible Analyst generates scripts or DDL schemas in many development environments, languages, and DBMS's. You can save generated scripts as a file or execute immediately using database connection. You can easily customize generation by modifying templates.

• SQL DDL (Oracle, SQL Server, DB/2, Informix, Ingres, Sybase, and many others)
• AS/400 DDS
• Native Progress data descriptions
• Generate referential integrity to enforce the data definition rules defined in the data model.
• XML

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Visible Analyst's repository provides team development capabilities that file-based tools cannot offer. Authorized users can access the repository at any time to manually add, modify, or delete objects or review entries and relationships. The repository supports concurrent user access, simultaneous update, and file/record locking.

• Multi-level security structure: three levels of security user account (3 types), project, object level
• Multiple developers can work on same element of the design at the same time
• Elminates conflicts - only one user makes changes
• Enterprise copy - make a subset of your model and distribute work across team
• Keep multiple versions of a model
• Synchronize changes among versions
  
• Projects linked in parent-child relationships - segment work - distribute - then later consolidate

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Visible Analyst offers advanced, value-added features that makes it more than a diagramming tool. Customizable analysis routines detect missing or conflicting information. A single, tightly integrated repository stores model elements once and allows them to be reused in multiple diagrams and projects. Consistency and integrity is increased because a single change to a shared element is immediately reflected everywhere is is used.

• Built-in consistency checks include: key analysis, normalization analysis, and balancing checks between model types
• Enforces rules of modeling technique
• Automatically migrates foreign keys
• Share data elements between different models - for example, data element used in a process model reused in ERD and UML

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Visible Analyst can publish web reports and model diagrams for sharing across the internet with HTML and JPEG (Internet browser native files). The report is user - customizable, and the customized report may be saved for later reuse. You can make queries and reports on projects combining the information in many different ways.

• HTML Reports
• Presentation-Quality
• Standard reports: Matrix, business rules, detail and summary of meta data definitions
• Save diagrams as JPEG, WMF, or clipboard files

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Visible Analyst supports data modeling at three levels: conceptual modeling, logical data modeling, and physical database design.

• Automatic summarization of logical to conceptual
• Model denormalization to improve performance
• Create model subsets and merge all views into one corporate model
  Denormalization rules
• Domains, aliases, independent data elements

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Visible Analyst takes you further toward your end goal - robust, well-documented, modular, 3-tier business applications. Data models are transferred to Visible Developer where business objects are designed from tables, fields, and relationships. Complete the application design by defining properties, methods, rules, views, look-up tables, and other design-time objects. Select a code pattern to generate any of the following:

• 3-tier Visual Basic business object
• Visual Basic forms user interface
• ASP web interface
• SQL Server or Oracle stored procedures
• C++/Java outline class definitions

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• Exclusive IntelliViews© technology allows you to develop database view specifications as you are data modeling, tracking name changes to every location and formula in which they are used, eliminating errors. View specifications are automatically adjusted to the specific DBMS dialect, allowing one set of views to be created and used without having to worry about specific SQL syntax and restrictions.
• Visible Analyst can build different model subsets and merge all views into one corporate model integrating the sub-models to finalize your bottom-up design.
• Visible Analyst can separate the logical and physical views of data models by creating denormalization rules on relationships which are used to generate the SQL DDL schemas.
• Foreign keys can be related to any unique field - not just the primary key
• Link external documents directly to meta-data definitions using hyperlinks. Documents, spreadsheets, URLs, and graphics can be used.
• Clusters can be used on data model models to limit the amount of detail shown. Great for high-level presentations where you want to focus on certain areas of a model.
• Multi-level data structures can be defined and referenced throughout your models.
• Easy convert object models to data models. Allows you to build your application in an OO architecture, but deploy on a relational database.
  

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Our Competitive Edge

Meta-data Repository with Concurrent User Access

Visible Analyst's extensible repository stores meta-data of data, processes, and objects that can be shared throughout an organization, making it much more powerful than file-based tools. The repository functions interactively with models to automatically create an organized database of information for each project as it is developed.

Authorized users can access the repository at any time to manually add, modify, or delete objects or review entries and relationships. During work sessions, the repository is automatically updated. The repository supports concurrent user access, simultaneous update, and
file/record locking.

Benefits of an integrated repository include:

Superior Enterprise Development. The repository supports enterprise modeling by linking projects in a parent-child relationship. Because individual software development projects are subsets of the global meta-data repository, large development groups can farm out pieces of models and maintain control. The result is better data integrity, security, and team collaboration.

Automatic Balancing. Visible Analyst balances between multiple model types, including data versus process and data versus class diagrams. With other modeling tools, you would have to export, compare, then import and change the data.

Object Integration. Each object defined in the Visible Analyst repository is maintained as a separate entry, available for reuse throughout the project. Define a data element once, and its use and definition is consistent whenever used, supporting the integration of diagram models with a search and reporting capability.

Denormalization Facilities

Visible Analyst automatically denormalizes relationships when generating database schema from data models that are subsets of logical business models. This not only saves you significant time
and resources in building data models and running database queries, it also enhances the performance of your physical database designs.

Exclusive IntelliViews™ Database View Support

Visible Analyst's sophisticated IntelliViews technology allows you to define generic database views that are automatically translated into popular database-specific syntax. Intelliviews also guides you in defining filter criteria and adapts the output to the SQL dialect of the target database. With IntelliViews:

• Changes to data elements used in filtering conditions, calculation formulas, and expressions are updated universally.
• Code for joins based on foreign key relationships defined in the model is generated automatically.
• Secondary views can be dynamically created to implement joins for databases that do not support outer joins.
• SQL generator seamlessly bridges differences between the logical data model and its (denormalized) physical implementation.
• Creation of new views based on reverse-engineered views from an existing database requires no additional work.

XML Support for E-business Applications

Visible Analyst can help your company integrate its existing information systems for e-business application development, corporate portal development, or business reengineering projects. Visible Analyst can generate from models an XML Document Content Description (DCD) file, while any data defined for objects in the model are generated as structured XML files. The XML DCD contains meta-data descriptions for all tables/entities on a given model. These files can be imported into eXcelon™ and other XML-based server products.

Interfaces to Other Development Tools

Visible Analyst works well with other development tools. Models can be imported to and exported from ERwin. Code can be generated directly from the meta-data model with PowerBuilder and other development tools supporting Visual Basic, COBOL, C, C++, and Java.

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