We performed a comparison between erwin Data Modeler by Quest and LeanIX 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."The most valuable feature is the physical or visual representation of the database, showing the tables, the columns, the foreign keys, and the ability to generate DDL, so you can physically implement databases."
"It's important to create standard templates — Erwin is good at that — and you can customize them. You can create a standard template so that your models have the same look and feel. And then, anyone using the tool is using the same font and the same general layout. erwin's very good at helping enforce that."
"When you're getting down to the database level, where you're building a design and you're creating DDL out of it, or you're going in the other direction where you're reaching into system catalogs and bringing things back, that starts to really require specialization. Visio isn't going to reverse-engineer that for you. Those features in erwin are valuable."
"It allows us to create logical data models. We can represent a database model in business terms, which is very useful for us."
"The data lineage feature is very valuable."
"There is absolutely no problem with the stability."
"The logical model gives developers, as well as the data modelers, an understanding of exactly how each object interacts with the others, whether a one-to-many, many-to-many, many-to-one, etc."
"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."
"Ease of use is the most valuable feature. From an enterprise architecture perspective, it's not too cumbersome with too many functionalities, yet it has a lot of attributes for the content it covers."
"It offers neat visualization and referencing functionality while enabling the creation of landscape maps and showing the relationship between different applications."
"We've been able to develop some nice looking reports, and the dashboard's capability to map is very easy compared to Enterprise Architect."
"I like the tool’s integration and maps."
"The usability is very high. It almost looks like a Facebook for Enterprise architecture, it's pretty nice. It's HTML5 based. The repository is very easy. It has 10 different ways of sorting the objects you have in your architecture repository. Maintaining new data or to add data to your repository is very easy."
"The most valuable features are that it's user-friendly and the user experience. It's easy to map the fact sheets."
"LeanIX has a great application information architecture."
"LeanIX has good usability and stability. This SaaS is intuitive, easy to use, and comes with a nice reporting feature."
"It does not have a cloud application."
"I find the UI very clunky and very difficult to use. If I add columns to a table the whole workflow could be so much easier. I get frustrated using it. I've tried other tools. I've tried to get off of erwin a few times. I always come back to it because every tool has its own set of problems, and it seems like if I have to pick my poison, I stay with erwin. But so many things that are clunky with it."
"We can only get licenses through partners."
"I am not so happy with its speed. Sometimes, it can have problems with connections."
"I still use Visio for conceptual modeling, and that's mainly because it is easier to change things, and you can relax some of the rules. DM's eventual target is a database, which means you actually have to dot all the Is and cross all the Ts, but in a conceptual model, you don't often know what you're working with. So, that's probably a constraint with erwin. They have made it a lot easier, and they've done a lot, but there is probably still room for improvement in terms of the ease of presentation back to the business. I'm comparing it with something like Visio where you can change colors on a box, change the text color and that sort of stuff, and change the lines. Such things are a whole lot easier in Visio, but once you get a theme organized in erwin, you can apply that theme to all of the objects. So, it becomes easier, but you do have to set up that theme."
"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."
"Complete Compare is set up only to compare properties that are of interest to us, but some of the differences cannot be brought over from one version of the model to another. This is despite the fact that we are clicking to bring objects from one place to another. Therefore, it's hard to tell at times if Complete Compare is working as intended without having to manually go into the details and check everything. If it could be redesigned to a degree where it is easier to use when we bring things over from one site to another and be sure that it's been done correctly, that would be nice to have. We would probably use the tool more often if the Complete Compare were easier to use."
"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."
"The whole integration architecture view of interfaces/data exchange could be improved."
"They're probably positioned pretty well. I hope that they would not focus that much on the business architecture, and they would focus more on the overall cloud strategy and how we can leverage multi-cloud and transition back and forth from other cloud providers. With a lot of current vendors, you get locked in with one cloud, and then you try to migrate to someone else, and it becomes very problematic. What they need to do is to look at the overall data strategy, and they probably need to amplify their data strategy, especially around multi-cloud."
"Does a poor job of being able to allocate detailed costings to components within the network."
"LeanIX has limited in-build diagramming capabilities, requiring the purchase of another tool. That is the main drawback of LeanIX because they don't have a built-in add-on product for diagramming."
"What would make LeanIX better is more variety in terms of reporting, and more flexibility with its data importing feature."
"I find LeanIX's pricing expensive for the functionality it offers. However, with the acquisition by SAP, the pricing might become more affordable due to scale and tiered application pricing. Currently, it offers different tiers for the first 400 applications: 400 to 600 and 600 to 1,000, making it expensive from a pricing standpoint."
"The solution’s API integration needs to improve. I would like to see a digital screen watch feature also in the solution."
"It's hard to predict the pricing of the system."
erwin Data Modeler by Quest is ranked 3rd in Enterprise Architecture Management with 37 reviews while LeanIX is ranked 1st in Enterprise Architecture Management with 18 reviews. erwin Data Modeler by Quest is rated 8.6, while LeanIX is rated 8.6. 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 LeanIX writes "Streamlines the process of identifying apps nearing end-of-life or requiring retirement and facilitates informed decisions about app retention". erwin Data Modeler by Quest is most compared with SAP PowerDesigner, IDERA ER/Studio, Lucidchart, Visio and Visual Paradigm, whereas LeanIX is most compared with ServiceNow, Sparx Systems Enterprise Architect, MEGA HOPEX, ADOIT and erwin Evolve by Quest. See our LeanIX vs. erwin Data Modeler by Quest report.
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