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."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."
"The product allows us to reuse entities and attributes."
"The solution is excellent in providing a visual representation of a database and can generate DDL for implementing changes. We use DDL for logical purposes to review with business people, ensuring they have the required fields for processing. We also use it as a data dictionary for the physical data model to understand all the purposes of the terms. This helps us map the logical and physical terms with the business definition to understand our data."
"It allows us to create logical data models. We can represent a database model in business terms, which is very useful for us."
"The most valuable features are the ability to reverse engineer and do model comparison. With the reverse engineering, I can understand the databases from third-party products. With the model comparison, I can track the differences between two versions of the same database."
"The fitting model is very intuitive."
"The modeling portion of the tool is the most valuable. There are some notes, naming standards, and other functions that we use as well. There's a whole boatload of functionality in this thing and we use maybe 10% of it. It seems to be pretty common that not all the functionality is fully utilized. But it's just got gobs and gobs of stuff that you can implement if you so choose to."
"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."
"Interfaces well with downstream systems of data."
"The solution has a very useful assessment tool that automatically populates from input data to produce a detailed analysis of customer's environments."
"One of the product's most valuable features is its ability to configure hardware devices."
"The solution provides a single window view of business, application, data, and technology views of the IT ecosystem."
"The most valuable feature would be application portfolio management, which is where they came from, but over time, they have got artificial intelligence. They built up a very good repository. If I identify a system by name, from historical information, oftentimes, they can tell me that this is deployed with this number of CPUs and they can give me a really good profile of the application for me to put it into a change management database with very little effort."
"Among the most valuable features are the easy-to-use interface and the ability to get quick results... Many tools that I have seen are great for technical people and for giving technical and business information as well, but they're not as friendly and easy as LeanIX... It works well for both technical and business users. It provides a good combination, enabling you to quickly put valuable information in for both technical and non-technical people and derive results."
"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."
"It offers neat visualization and referencing functionality while enabling the creation of landscape maps and showing the relationship between different applications."
"The modeling product itself is far and above anything else that I've seen on the market. There are certain inconsistencies when it comes to keeping up with other platforms' databases in the reverse-engineering process. It should also support more database platforms."
"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."
"This is a very complex product."
"I would like the solution to be less rigid in terms of its theory."
"The reverse engineering in Oracle Databases needs improvement, as there are issues."
"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 am not so happy with its speed. Sometimes, it can have problems with connections."
"In terms of new features, it would be great to have a cloud base. We should be able to put it on the cloud for better collaboration and data models sharing."
"The solution’s API integration needs to improve. I would like to see a digital screen watch feature also in the solution."
"The initial setup has room for improvement."
"What would make LeanIX better is more variety in terms of reporting, and more flexibility with its data importing feature."
"Another area for improvement is that when you're starting to look into more advanced information, using the solution's APIs and its customizations, documentation for that specific aspect is not very good. There is not too much support built into the offering for that aspect, for a developer."
"The solution uses Gartner's time-based framework for application rationalization. One more thing that you can consider is having some add-on frameworks for the same, not just Gartner."
"The whole integration architecture view of interfaces/data exchange could be improved."
"It's hard to predict the pricing of the system."
"The modeling could be improved."
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 16 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, Visio, Lucidchart 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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