We performed a comparison between erwin Data Modeler by Quest and iServer based on real PeerSpot user reviews.
Find out in this report how the two Enterprise Architecture Management solutions compare in terms of features, pricing, service and support, easy of deployment, and ROI."We had some data integration projects, where we needed to integrate it for about 100 databases. Doing that manually is crazy; we can't do that. With erwin, it was much easier to identify which tables and columns could be used for the integration. That means a lot in terms of time and effort as well as my image to the customer, because they can see that we are providing value in a very short time."
"The product allows us to reuse entities and attributes."
"It is a scalable solution...The technical support team is fine."
"We can create mappings in erwin and possibly data dictionaries."
"The ability to collaborate between different members across the organization is the most valuable feature. It gives us the ability to work on the same model, regardless of where we are physically."
"What has been useful, I have been able to reverse engineer our existing data models to document explicitly referential integrity relationships, primary/foreign keys in the model, and create ERDs that are subject area-based which our clients can use when working with our databases. The reality is that our databases are not explicitly documented in the DDL with primary/foreign key relationships. You can't look at the DDL and explicitly understand the primary/foreign key relationships that exist between our tables, so the referential integrity is not easily understood. erwin has allowed me to explicitly document that and create ERDs. This has made it easier for our clients to consume our databases for their own purposes."
"It's a safeguard for me because I'm always concerned that somebody is free handing it and will forget a key coming from the parent. The migrating keys are a great feature. Identifying relationships, non-identifying relationships, and being visually right there to understand the differences are great features. erwin is key to being able to visually understand whatever the customer is requesting. They'll give you words on a paper, but once they can actually view it as a picture, it really comes to life. The data comes to life to where they understand exactly what they're asking for."
"It allows us to create logical data models. We can represent a database model in business terms, which is very useful for us."
"We like the governance."
"There were lots of different requirements, and collaboration and review is one of the biggest things. There is also Office 360 integration, and there's flexibility to use it as a database as well."
"The solution is easily modified to suit your needs."
"Tech support is very responsive. They solved issues within a prompt response time."
"The initial setup is easy."
"I have to think less with this solution. It's simple."
"The most valuable features of iServer are the integration with Microsoft Office and the interface is similar to Microsoft applications making them easy to use."
"Good and effective reporting features, which help in decision making."
"In terms of improvements, support could have been better in terms of installation, especially of workgroups. We struggled quite a bit to get it up and running. Collaboration could have been better from an installation perspective, but it is trivial as compared to what we use it for. Other than that, I don't have much feedback. It works pretty well, and the fact that we've been using it for more than a decade shows that it is quite solid."
"I would like to see the reporting capabilities be more dynamic and more inclusive of information. The API is very sparsely understood by people across the user community."
"We are planning to move, in 2021, into their server version, where multiple data modelers can work at the same time and share their models. It has become a pain point to merge the models from individual desktops and get them into a single data model, when multiple data modelers are working on a particular project. It becomes a nightmare for the senior data modeler to bring them together, especially when it comes to recreating them when you want to merge them."
"I'd really like to see the PDF function become available. It would make my life much easier than what it is at the moment because whenever I need to collaborate with people that do not have erwin, I have to go through the wonkiness of going to Word and then save it from Word into PDF. There's a lot of differences between erwin 4.4 and 2020."
"The only real complaint I have is the time it takes to do a database comparison on a large model. If they could speed that up, that would be the only thing I can think of that needs improvement."
"The reverse engineering in Oracle Databases needs improvement, as there are issues."
"Some Source official systems give us DDLs to work with and they have contents not required to be part of the DDL before we reverse engineer in the erwin DM. Therefore, we manually make changes to those scripts and edit them, then reverse-engineer within the tool. So, it does take some time to edit these DDL scripts generated by the source operational systems. What I would suggest: It would be helpful if there were a place within the erwin tool to import the file and automatically eliminate all the unnecessary lines of code, and just have the clean code built-in to generate the table/data model."
"I would like to see more support for working with the big-data world. There are so many new databases evolving and it's very hard for them to keep up with all of the new technologies. It would be good if they were able to dynamically support big-data platforms, other than Hive and Teradata."
"I haven't used this solution long enough to know what areas could be improved."
"The one issue is that if you want to import predefined work, you need to put the licensing model in. So if you wanted to import work that was done before, you then need to buy a separate product for that."
"More visualization techniques and ways to report the data might be helpful."
"The performance is slow, which is something that should be improved."
"We could allocate permissions to use only specific components to the users rather than the entire instance."
"The modelling needs improvement, specifically forecasting capabilities and scenarios."
"It definitely needs help to improve the visual aspect of the solution."
"The migration tool needs to be included in the main package, and not as a separate license."
erwin Data Modeler by Quest is ranked 3rd in Enterprise Architecture Management with 37 reviews while iServer is ranked 6th in Enterprise Architecture Management with 15 reviews. erwin Data Modeler by Quest is rated 8.6, while iServer is rated 7.2. The top reviewer of erwin Data Modeler by Quest writes "The product lets users import different types of models, but it is expensive, and the interface must be improved". On the other hand, the top reviewer of iServer writes "Enables flexible parameters for any process model and has a valuable document management feature ". erwin Data Modeler by Quest is most compared with SAP PowerDesigner, IDERA ER/Studio, Lucidchart, Visio and ARIS Architect and Designer, whereas iServer is most compared with LeanIX, Sparx Systems Enterprise Architect, ARIS BPA, Visio and ARIS Cloud. See our erwin Data Modeler by Quest vs. iServer report.
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