We performed a comparison between erwin Data Modeler by Quest and IBM Blueworks Live based on real PeerSpot user reviews.
Find out in this report how the two Business Process Design solutions compare in terms of features, pricing, service and support, easy of deployment, and ROI."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."
"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."
"The product lets us import different types of models from various databases."
"The solution is good for organizing the data and the scripting part is very powerful. It's easy to create technical scripts for models."
"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."
"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."
"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 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."
"IBM Blueworks Live is cloud-based and provides easy access to all your processes in one place."
"This solution is good at utilizing standards rules for connectivity."
"The solution is stable. All the refreshes run very well."
"The stability is pretty good. It is highly available, which is key. You don't lose your work and can autosave."
"It has a built-in capability to capture process owners and managers against processes along with other process governance roles."
"Business users understand it really well, which means we can then help them automate their business processes."
"It's very easy, very quick to create a process map. It has templates. The look and feel is very nice. What we want to achieve out of the process map, we can achieve it using Blueworks."
"I like the two-tiered approach, that is, discover and then drill down to the main steps. You can right click and attach risk, policies, and much more. It is a user-friendly solution."
"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."
"It is not a very stable solution. I rate the stability five out of ten."
"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 would like to see the ability to support more NoSQL platforms more quickly. In addition, enhancing the graphics to render more quickly would be beneficial for any user."
"The reverse engineering in Oracle Databases needs improvement, as there are issues."
"erwin generally fails to successfully reverse engineer our Oracle Databases into erwin data models. The way that they are engineered on our side, the syntax is correct from an Oracle perspective, but it seems to be very difficult for erwin to interpret. What I end up doing is using Oracle Data Modeler to reverse engineer into the Oracle data model, then forward engineer the DDL into an Oracle syntax, and importing that DDL into erwin in order to successfully bring in most of the information from our physical data models. That is a bit of a challenge."
"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."
"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."
"We'd also like to see it be Six Sigma or Lean compatible, a lot of people have asked about that."
"There should be an option to import from and export to Microsoft Visio. Being able to move files back and forth between Blueworks Live and Visio would be good."
"The objects that the solution creates are not unique."
"The user interface is quite easy at first but process analysts soon run into roadblocks of limited functionality, which is disappointing."
"We haven't yet been able to dabble in case management with Blueworks Live, as it is not yet offered with the product."
"IBM Blueworks is BPMN 2.0 compliant, but it does not adapt to the overarching BPMN 2.0 concepts."
"In the Blue Works Live software boxes and lines are automatically placed by the programme and can't be easily manipulated."
"I would like to see integration with ERP systems. This would help us to simulate the process and see where the problems are. Though IBM Blueworks Live is a good tool for documenting, it is not good for simulating."
erwin Data Modeler by Quest is ranked 9th in Business Process Design with 37 reviews while IBM Blueworks Live is ranked 12th in Business Process Design with 20 reviews. erwin Data Modeler by Quest is rated 8.6, while IBM Blueworks Live is rated 8.2. 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 IBM Blueworks Live writes "An easily scalable and affordable solution that enables users to document and digitize processes with ease". erwin Data Modeler by Quest is most compared with SAP PowerDesigner, IDERA ER/Studio, Visio, Lucidchart and Sparx Systems Enterprise Architect, whereas IBM Blueworks Live is most compared with Visio, SAP Signavio Process Manager, Lucidchart, ARIS Cloud and Camunda. See our IBM Blueworks Live vs. erwin Data Modeler by Quest report.
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