We performed a comparison between erwin Data Modeler by Quest and IDERA ER/Studio 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.
"It supports a wide variety of databases, including the latest ones. We have chosen to go for a cloud-based database, and it supports that, which is very useful."
"The visual data models for helping to overcome data source complexity and enabling understanding and collaboration around maintenance and usage are excellent. A picture speaks 1,000 words. Seeing a picture that shows you how the data relates to each other helps you better understand what the data is and how to use it. Pairing that information with a dictionary, which has the definitions of the tables and columns or the entities and attributes, ensures that the users understand what the data is so that they can use it best and most successfully."
"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."
"Any tool will do diagramming but I think the ability to put the stuff up in a graphical fashion, then think about it, and keep things consistent is what's valuable about it. It's too easy when you're using other methods to not have naming consistent standards and column consistent definitions, et cetera."
"Being able to point it to a database and then pull the metadata is a valuable feature. Another valuable feature is being able to rearrange the model so that we can display it to users. We are able to divide the information into subject areas, and we can divide the data landscape into smaller chunks, which makes it easier to understand. If you had 14 subject areas, 1,000 entities, and 6,000 columns, you can't quite understand it all at once. So, being able to have the same underlying model but only display portions of it at a time is extremely useful."
"We can create mappings in erwin and possibly data dictionaries."
"erwin has versioning so you can keep versions, over time, of those models and you can compare any version to any version. If you're looking at a specific database and you want to see what changed over time, that's really useful. You can go back to a different version or connect that to your change-control processes so you can see what was released when."
"The product lets us import different types of models from various databases."
"IDERA keeps up with the versions of Oracle and SQL Server that I'm using. I mostly use SQL Server and when there are new features, a new type of index, for example, IDERA also includes them in upgrades of the data modeling tool."
"It's much easier to develop the database structure and change it on the fly, rather than doing it manually in SQL Server itself. That saves time."
"The most important features are logical and physical models that we can compare and develop. Also, the Data Dictionary can be created out of your studio. Finally, database schemas help understand the logic that's behind the scene, behind the SQL tables. Especially when there are a lot of them, the schemas help everyone understand the business processes."
"It's easy to model and has a user-friendly interface. I like the team portal because, once we upload, the entire team can see the model."
"Using this product has improved the way we maintain our models because they have a place where we can keep all of them, and they can be viewed using the web interface."
"This application does a lot of things, as do competitor products, but the main reason to go with this product was the ability to create many automations, where we can improve our work and our process."
"Modeling with Data Architect: We can quickly reverse-engineer a database from an existing database or create a model from scratch."
"One of the valuable features is inheritance when joining tables. When setting up RI and domains and rules, ER/Studio does a lot of the grunt, boilerplate code that would otherwise have to be hand-coded."
"I love the product. I love the ability to get into the code, make it automated, and make it do what I want. I would like to see them put some kind of governance over the ability to make changes to the mart tables with the API, so that instead of just using the modeler's rights to a table -- it has a separate set of rights for API access. That would give us the ability to put governance around API applications. Right now a person with erwin and Excel/VBA has the ability to make changes to models with the API if they also have rights to make changes to the model from erwin. It's a risk."
"The solution's model mark could be better because it crashes sometimes."
"It would be nice to have it on the Linux platform, not just Windows. If they can support Linux, there would be a huge market for it."
"I would like to see improved reporting and, potentially, dashboards built on top of that. Right now, it's a little manual. More automated reporting and dashboard views would help because currently you have to push things out to a spreadsheet, or to HTML, and there aren't many other options that I know of. I would like to be able to produce graphs and additional things right in the tool, instead of having to export the data somewhere else."
"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."
"I would like to have more data sources from other, different vendors. In recent years, the vendor has reduced the number of data sources, and I would like to have more data sources for every brand. For example, with Oracle, I would like to have compatibility for many versions, including old ones, not just the most recent."
"The reverse engineering in Oracle Databases needs improvement, as there are issues."
"The interface must be improved."
"I'd like the ability to debug the errors ourselves instead of having to call them. There are certain types of errors that, I wouldn't say they come up regularly, but when you have an error it is very often the same type of error. Knowing that it's a Type III or Type I, it would be nice to have some kind of debugging facility for us to use to find out where the problem that threw that error occurs. That would be a really cool feature."
"The model diagram because very clumsy when you save it on the team server and the models are very big."
"I would like to see better documentation/help for the Data Architect tool. Creation of tutorials would be nice, as there are some features which are not as clearly defined as they should be."
"The number of options can be overwhelming at times. That is not necessarily a bad thing but for a newbie, it can be daunting."
"What I would like to see improved is the reliability of the releases, releases that are a little less buggy."
"The solution could be sped up, as it is a little slow (e.g., when it's doing its database compare)."
"We would always like to see Repository performance improve, checking in and checking out."
"It isn't easy to compare the thousands of tables in the model against the database. The tool should improve the synchronization within the large organization"
erwin Data Modeler by Quest is ranked 3rd in Enterprise Architecture Management with 37 reviews while IDERA ER/Studio is ranked 10th in Enterprise Architecture Management with 33 reviews. erwin Data Modeler by Quest is rated 8.6, while IDERA ER/Studio is rated 8.4. 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 IDERA ER/Studio writes "The solution has important reverse engineering features, but it needs a single sign-on feature". erwin Data Modeler by Quest is most compared with SAP PowerDesigner, Visio, Lucidchart, Sparx Systems Enterprise Architect and AWS Well-Architected Tool, whereas IDERA ER/Studio is most compared with Sparx Systems Enterprise Architect, SAP PowerDesigner, Toad Data Modeler, erwin Evolve by Quest and Aqua Data Studio. See our IDERA ER/Studio vs. erwin Data Modeler by Quest report.
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