We performed a comparison between erwin Data Modeler by Quest and UNICOM System Architect 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 find that its ability to generate database code from a model for a wide array of data sources cuts development time. The ability to create one model in your design phase and then have it generate DDL code for Oracle or Teradata, or whichever environment you need is really nice. It's not only nice but it also saves man-hours of time. You would have to take your design and just type in manually. It has to take days off out of the work."
"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."
"Drag-and-drop data modeling and reverse engineering out of databases are the most valuable features of erwin Data Modeler by Quest."
"The data lineage feature is very valuable."
"I have worked with erwin Data Modeler for quite some time and familiarity is its most valuable feature."
"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."
"It is a scalable solution...The technical support team is fine."
"The solution’s code generation ensures accurate engineering of data sources, as there is no development time. Code doesn't even have to be reviewed. We have been using this solution for so long and all the code which has been generated is accurate with the requirements. Once we generate the DDLs out of the erwin tools, the development team does a quick review of the script line by line. They will just be running the script on the database and looking into other requirements, such as the index. So, there is less effort from development side to create tables or build a database."
"It is useful for creating build-outs and architecture views and for publishing reports and stuff like that for different programs."
"It has good end-to-end metamodel interrelationships."
"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."
"One of the things I've been talking to the erwin team about through the years is that every data model should have the ability to be multi-language... When I was working at Honda, it became very difficult to work with the Japanese teams using just one model. You can have two models, one in English and one in Japanese, but that means you have to keep the updates back and forth, and that always increases the risk of something not being updated."
"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."
"There is a lack of local support in the China region."
"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 Bulk Editor needs improvement. If you had something that was a local model to your local machine, you could connect to the API, then it would write directly into the repository. However, when you have something that is on the centralized server, that functionality did not work. Then, you had to export out to a CSV and upload up to the repository. It would have been nice to be able to do the direct API without having that whole download and upload thing. Maybe I didn't figure it out, but I'm pretty sure that didn't work when it was a model that sat on a centralized repository."
"The navigation is a little bit of a challenge. It's painful. For example, if you've got a view open and you want to try to move from side to side, the standard today is being able to drag and drop left and right. You can't really do that in the model. Moving around the model is painful because it doesn't follow the Windows model today."
"I would like the solution to be more user-friendly to deploy."
"They need to add reports that show the enterprise architecture perspectives, and the dashboards should be comfortable for the senior enterprise architects so that they can view the complete landscape."
"I don't use the tool or know a lot. It is going to have some shortcomings. When it comes down to publishing, we just found out this week that they actually have a publisher add-on. So, what we were trying to publish was not giving a detailed report about the architecture, views, etc. I just wish they had sent these to UNICOM and contacted them about add-on features for the publishing part of the tool."
Earn 20 points
erwin Data Modeler by Quest is ranked 3rd in Enterprise Architecture Management with 37 reviews while UNICOM System Architect is ranked 25th in Enterprise Architecture Management. erwin Data Modeler by Quest is rated 8.6, while UNICOM System Architect is rated 6.0. 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 UNICOM System Architect writes "Useful for creating build-outs and architecture views, but requires a publisher add-on for some detailed reports". erwin Data Modeler by Quest is most compared with SAP PowerDesigner, IDERA ER/Studio, Lucidchart, Visio and Sparx Systems Enterprise Architect, whereas UNICOM System Architect is most compared with Sparx Systems Enterprise Architect. See our UNICOM System Architect vs. erwin Data Modeler by Quest report.
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