IBM Rational Data Architect v6.1

IBM Rational Data Architect V6.1 is a new enterprise data modeling tool in the Information Management software portfolio. Rational Data Architect helps data architects understand information assets and their relationships, designs federated databases, and streamlines database projects. Rational Data Architect provides advanced features to help data architects discover, model, visualize, relate, and develop heterogeneous data assets. Designed for integration, Rational Data Architect combines traditional data modeling capabilities with data source mapping discovery and model analysis, all organized in a modular project-based manner. Rational Data Architect is integrated with the IBM Rational Software Development Platform, which includes requirements management and configuration management products for improved project time-to-value, consistency, and accuracy in the enterprise environment. Major features/functions include:
Enterprise data modeling
Rational Data Architect can be used to create logical, physical, and domain models. Logical data models represent a business-oriented view of your information model. Logical models are represented as entity relationship models in Rational Data Architect and visually represented in diagrams using Information Engineering (IE) notation. Physical data models are also implemented as entity relationship models. These physical models can be represented using either IE or Unified Modeling Language (UML) notation. Rational Data Architect enables data professionals to create physical data models from scratch, from logical models using transformation or from the database using reverse engineering. Domains are used to define the logical data types used by the logical model to define attributes. Domains can be defined in the logical data model or in a separate domain model and are used by transformations to the physical model. Rational Data Architect also supports glossary models for naming standard support.
Mapping
Rational Data Architect provides unique mapping capabilities, which help uncover and document the relationships between data assets. Mapping semantics are essential information to any enterprise with multiple data sources. With Rational Data Architect, the mappings are "remembered" in the model and are used for other purposes, including impact analysis and tracing/lineage. The mapping technology in Rational Data Architect consists of two parts, mapping construction and mapping generation. Mapping construction is the process of building the mappings. Building the mappings in Rational Data Architect is simple and straightforward. For example, users simply draw lines between columns in two tables to define a relationship. The user is relieved from writing code in complex languages such as SQL/XML. Mapping generation is performed by rendering a mapping into a specific run-time language, including SQL and SQL/XML. Mapping helps simplify the complexity of understanding schemas and the complexity of establishing relationships between schemas. Rational Data Architect has unique mapping capabilities, which provide:
Visualization of complex schemas and relationships
Discovery (to help uncover implicit semantics): Relationships are discovered using a variety of deep algorithms from IBM Research