SAP PowerDesigner Reviews

We use SAP PowerDesigner for logical data modeling and physical data modeling.

The feature I found valuable in SAP PowerDesigner is extraction.

I also like that my company hasn't faced any issues because of the clear documentation about SAP PowerDesigner.

One disadvantage of SAP PowerDesigner is that you cannot reverse engineer the ALTER statements, so that's an enhancement or area for improvement I'm looking forward to seeing from the SAP team in the future. That should directly reflect on the physical data models my company builds.

I also want SAP PowerDesigner to be able to generate ALTER statements in the future.

I've been using SAP PowerDesigner for over two and a half years.

Stability-wise, SAP PowerDesigner is a seven out of ten.

SAP PowerDesigner is a highly scalable solution.

I haven't contacted the technical support for SAP PowerDesigner. Support only reaches out to me to see if there's any upgrade or patch installation issue.

My company hasn't used a different solution apart from SAP PowerDesigner. It's been the company's solution for the last twenty years. Though my company recently thought of bringing erwin Data Modeler on board, the initiation process was put on hold.

Setting up SAP PowerDesigner was straightforward, though the technical management team handled that. That team makes the software available for people to use.

My company hasn't disclosed ROI details to me, so I have no information on whether there was ROI from SAP PowerDesigner.

Regarding costs, SAP PowerDesigner is pricey, as I've heard from my team manager, which is why the company has been thinking of bringing another solution on board.

My company has implemented SAP PowerDesigner and no longer requires any other data modeling tool.

I'm using the desktop version of SAP PowerDesigner, version 16.5.7.

In the company, more than one hundred people use SAP PowerDesigner. My company only has twenty-two licenses, so most users rely on mobile licenses.

One person can handle the deployment and maintenance of SAP PowerDesigner.

I advise anyone looking into using SAP PowerDesigner to consider the only constraint that erwin Data Modeler could overcome and SAP PowerDesigner couldn't. erwin Data Modeler can generate the ALTER statements apart from the CREATE statements. In contrast, SAP PowerDesigner only generates the CREATE statements, which is why people prefer to use erwin Data Modeler. You also need to consider your budget. Cost-wise, SAP PowerDesigner is better than erwin Data Modeler.

My rating for SAP PowerDesigner is eight out of ten.

My company is a customer of SAP PowerDesigner.

I have been creating physical, logical models for data warehousing for a major bank in the Czech Republic. We have been converting these physical models into external files, generating the DDLs for objects and then deploying objects into those environments. We have 20 users in our business who use this solution but there are additional users across various branches of the bank. 

The most useful feature has been the detailed possibility to model almost anything regarding physical databases. The main goal was to create a data model for financial services in Teradata including a column description, primary case indexes and object relations. 

You have the possibility to complete a connection for abbreviations if you are creating columns or names of the tables. In the Citrix environment, this has been lagging to the point where the PowerDesigner was not usable. Various patches to fix this have not worked. Ultimately, we have abandoned PowerDesigner on Citrix. 

After working with SAP to resolve this, we found that this could be an issue with VPNs or with a firewall inside a bank institution. We haven't concluded on this for certain but definitely need an improvement when using PowerDesigner on the Citrix Server. 

In a future release, we would like to have the ability to improve the visibility of changes when doing check-ins. I have been working on a model for a few days and in those few days the repository got updated by up to 20 people. We would like to have a list of changes, the name of the user which created a change, or the login of the user who created this change in the change book. This would save us a lot of time. 

I have been using this solution for three years. 

This solution is stable but only on local devices. I have had some issues with the Citrix Server. For example, the solution has worked well when we have had users on holiday and when not running at full capacity. However, when our full operation is running, PowerDesigner does not perform well. 

This is a scalable solution. There is a lot of possibility to create many models and scale its use. 

At some point, we had an issue with the abbreviation file and we couldn't solve it on our side. We had to connect to the SAP user support and they resolved the issue for us in half a day. Overall, the support we received was really good. 

The initial setup is straightforward now but initially took some time to get used to. I've been using it as a user, not as an administrator. We connected to a repository and the name and user login was automatically remembered so it took about one minute.

At one point, we observed an error when two users have been doing check-ins of this model at the same time.

This solution offers good documentation and some cool usage types. I would rate this solution an eight out of ten because learning how to use this solution is easy. However, there have been some difficulties, especially with visibility of changes. I haven't been using other modeling tools so it makes it challenging to compare this solution to others.

I use it for business analysis to understand my clients' business flows. I use the various tools available in SAP and the conceptual data models to analyze and understand the business flow.

The physical database model is definitely the most valuable feature because it describes normalization exactly the way you understand the data, and it deploys it perfectly with open source systems.

Even with Microsoft database systems, it describes the data perfectly. I can just include a picture of the database model into my design specifications, and developers would be able to understand it perfectly.

The focus is more on mainstream development environments, and I see a lack of focus on the open source world. I think SAP PowerDesigner probably interfaces better with SQL Server and Db2 but not with open source databases like PostgreSQL and MySQL.

I'm an Apple user and not a Microsoft user, so I would love to have SAP PowerDesigner be available on macOS and not just on Microsoft. Right now, I am forced to install parallels and run a virtual machine on my Apple.

Yes, it's stable, and I haven't found any bugs. Provided that my work files are stored in the cloud, I can access all the models from both my laptop and desktop computers without a problem. The way that they've designed access to the models is quite good.

The interface is way better with SAP PowerDesigner. Other solutions are limited in their designs. They simply focus on the database, for example, and not on the different types of models.

I would advise you to just start using SAP PowerDesigner because it's intuitive. You have to be a software engineer if you want to use it; you have to know what you're doing. You can't use it as a casual user. However, the models use standards, so they're not difficult to use once you know what you're doing. If you want to design a database, there are other tools that have similar conventions, but SAP's implementation is intuitive and easy to understand. So, my advice is to just directly use it.

Apart from some improvements needed to integrate better with open source systems, SAP PowerDesigner is an excellent tool. It's very easy to use and is very stable. I would give it a rating of nine on a scale from one to ten.

I used SAP PowerDesigner as a tool for document folder flow charts and other features.

SAP PowerDesigner is helpful because you can create any type of document.

The most valuable features of SAP PowerDesigner are the creation the flow charts and folders. It is a powerful tool.

SAP PowerDesigner can improve the ease of use. It is not the best tool on the market because it is tough to navigate and use. A beginner would not be able to use it well, it requires some experience. If the solution was more user-friendly it would be able to be used by more audiences. I do not think many people are aware of this solution and they should use it.

In a future release, more features should be added. Other solutions have more features.

I have been using SAP PowerDesigner for approximately two years.

I rate the stability of SAP PowerDesigner a seven out of ten.

I rate the scalability of SAP PowerDesigner a six out of ten.

We have approximately 200 to 300 in the company but not everyone uses it. We will increase usage depending on the company's requirements.

The support from SAP PowerDesigner is great.

I rate the support from SAP PowerDesigner an eight out of ten.

Positive

I did not use other solutions similar to SAP PowerDesigner.

The initial setup of SAP PowerDesigner requires some training before they can work on it. It would be beneficial for those who want to work with the took to take a one month or 20-day training course.

The price of the solution is low. 

I rate the price of SAP PowerDesigner an eight out of ten.

I have not evaluated other solutions before using them. I use whatever the client specifies.

We use 10 to 20 experienced people for the maintenance of the solution. However, the amount of people needed depends on what needs to be worked on. We have other teams that work on the tool, such as developers.

My advice to others is they should try out the solution, it's a good tool. This solution is priced low and if it works for their use case then it is better than paying for a more expensive solution. If your requirements are too high, you can't expect this tool to meet all of your needs, it does not have all the features. You have to go for other options if your requirement needs more features.

I rate SAP PowerDesigner a seven out of ten.

The solution is useful for data warehousing. I'm a contractor and I work with various companies. Each of them have different versions of the product installed, some on-prem and some in the cloud.

I mostly work on the conceptual and logical side of things, and I enjoy how easy it is to use.

I've tried to use Power Designer to bring in images, which didn't work very well at all.

I think it's probably one of the best solutions, but it is not at all easy to deploy in a big organization. I think it's a problem because of internal processes, and you have to find the right person to help you. SAP as a whole is a very big, complex animal.

I have used this solution on-and-off for 23 years. 

It is a very stable solution, but we have big issues if we try to bring in FSLDM. I'm sure Power Designer can handle it, but I think it drops the links because FSLDM is such a huge model. You can't always trust it because FSLDM was not developed in Power Designer.

I think it's a scalable solution. In one company we have a 38-user license, but that's a very large bank. In another company, there's only one person doing data modeling.

The complexity depends on the client, the firewall, and the company's rules of who can use and view different things. 

The implementation can be done in-house. The time it takes depends on the client. In some instances, it takes quite a while if there are a lot of firewall issues to deal with and the client wants it deployed in the cloud.

I would not recommend this solution to others who are considering it. 

I would rate this solution as an eight out of ten. 

We are using the enterprise architect version of the solution, using the repository to create our enterprise models; different business models that include process to data models and application architecture models. From a dimension perspective it's like a business application with data and infrastructure. We have categories of different models and we use this tool. I model a lot of these into centralized repositories, so they can be used by internal staff to view all the models or to see the lineage and navigate through them, viewing the relationship between the models and staff. 

In terms of modeling, we have large teams of around 50 to 60 people who have the license to show the different kinds of models in terms of system projects. For the web portal which allows viewing of the models, all users in our organization have access rights, meaning there are around 100 people that have access. The solution is used daily. We will likely carry out a review at the end of the year to see whether the current configuration is enough for us or whether we need to expand. We are customers of SAP and I'm a manager, data architecture. 

One of the key reasons for choosing this solution above others is because of the repository features which we're able to consolidate and work on a single repository where we store all our models in one location. In addition, the web portal feature allows us to present, or actually view these models from a browser's perspective. We have two groups of people: The first develops the models and the second views them. They can log in to a web portal and view the models. The product presented a strong case for us in deciding to establish this kind of creation and consumption model to make it really cost effective and increase the value of our organization. 

Although the presentation for viewing the models is good, I think it could be better. From my experience with other products, the SAP UI could be improved by enabling simpler navigation, especially for non-technical users. It would be ideal if there was a more seamless viewing experience of the models. Another improvement would be to adopt more industry models, especially from the enterprise architecture dimension. You could be adopting the industry standard as with made models, UML and other forms of industry enterprise architecture models. That would enhance the whole usability and enterprise nature of the modeling t

Additional features could support other model types which would improve the connectors to the increasing number of software to service packages now that a lot of the applications are moving into the cloud. We need to connect on all fronts. There is still a lot of room for improvement on the web portals in terms of the usability and the visual. 

I've been using this solution for about eight months. 

From the performance perspective, I think the tool is pretty stable. The only issue might be on the loading of the model which depends on how complex your model is. You need to be careful of those with a lot of relationships and you need to add other models when you load it in the web portal, and that can slow things down. In general, the solution is stable but it depends on your configuration. I don't have many crashes. 

The scalability seems to be okay although I haven't fully tested it yet. 

The technical support is good and they reply promptly. They also have information online. I'm happy with the support. 

I used to use ER/Studio and Techwin for modeling. In my previous job, the focus was more on the modeling and data modeling as a stand-alone kit. We selected PowerDesigner here because of the repository setup it caters to. SAP has the function to be able to establish the repositories, work in teams and then consolidate and present to a larger audience through a web browser. That was the main consideration for switching. The usability of how to model is pretty similar and there's no big difference in terms of the functionalities. But from a whole enterprise setup; the repositories, the check in, check out of those things into a central repository, are the key reasons we switched. 

One key difference is the connectivity. Besides the modeling we also do reverse engineering. We will try to connect to different data sources to extract information rather than building a model from scratch. That is one advantage because this is actually the SAP program so it has a good connection with the SAP product. We use quite a lot of SAP modules in our organization, so it's a good fit in a way that we can actually link it to some of our SAP servers and database and just reverse engineer the models. This is a main benefit over the other solutions which  are more neutral and more stand-alone products.

I carried out the initial setup myself and would say that it is moderately difficult. There's a lot of reading necessary on the documentation and if you're setting it up for the first time you might require technical support. Implementation took several days but the timing really depends because some of it requires the trust structures, opening up parts, etc.  

The key thing is really about the use case or the requirements. We are into enterprise modeling and we are looking at sharing the models and those are the requirements that shift the evaluation criteria. For those looking at stand-alone models, they may not be looking at sharing these, mainly they just want to produce their models and things, so those criteria will differentiate selecting the different products. And whether you have a large team of people or you are focusing on only a few players in a small team, that will also determine your criteria for selecting the product. 

I would rate this solution an eight out of 10. 

I use PowerDesigner to take business requirements and model them from a data modeling perspective. We can then take the result and turn it into a physical model in a database like SQL Server or Oracle.

This is a tool that facilitates a more cohesive development. From a design and documentation perspective, it makes sure that all of the databases are the correct version for the code base, without running into issues with things being out of sync or out-of-date compared to production or development. 

I like the property sheet capability and the user-defined attributes that you can set up.

The central repository is helpful because they have the ability to check-in models when working as part of a larger team. It supports versioning, as well.

Checking-in models to the repository, especially when working remotely, is a slow process than can sometimes have problems with models being corrupted. Between the client tool and the repository, the process is very chatty. Consequently, sometimes it takes forever to download a model and if it is corrupted then you won't be able to check it in or out again.

It would be a nice feature if we had the ability to generate a JSON file from a model.

I have been using PowerDesigner for more than 10 years.

If you're just modeling on one computer such as your desktop, or your client's computer, then it is very stable. However, if you are not on your company's network and you are checking in models from a remote location then there can be problems.

I think that the scalability is fine, given that it's for design and development on a project team. On a large project team, we might have 10 or 20 modelers working on it. You don't have thousands or tens of thousands of users, so it scales just fine for what its purpose is.

In my department, we have 10 or 15 users who are data architects or solution architects.

We have somebody internally who supports the platform. We have client licensing, so if there is an issue then we can raise a ticket with the vendor, but that is somebody from another group. My personal impression is that technical support is fine.

I have used other tools like erwin Data Modeler and they have versioning repositories also, but it seems like their check-in and check-out processes are much simpler and much cleaner. The central repository seems to be a little more stable.

The other advantage to erwin is that you can model right in the diagram, which means less clicking. In PowerDesigner, sometimes there are so many property sheets that we are constantly clicking.

When I began using PowerDesigner, it was an independent product. Since that time, SAP acquired it. It is a very solid product that does both data modeling and business process modeling.

My advice for anybody who is implementing PowerDesigner is to make sure that the central repository for versioning models is on a high-bandwidth network with a solid database backing it up.

In summary, this product gives you all of the features that a modeler would require to produce both logical and physical data models. There really is not a lot that is lacking and my only complaint is about the versioning repository. Of course, this is only a problem when we are working remotely. If there is a large model with perhaps 600 tables and 2,500 attributes, then it is going to be very demanding on bandwidth.

I would rate this solution an eight out of ten.

I am a computer designer and I consult to various companies. I use PowerDesigner for my own system modeling, which I then share with engineers and ultimately, the customer.

Examples of the types of modeling I do are insurance billing and banking products.

I do a data-centric design, so for me, the data analysis and design tools are the most valuable features.

The interface is user-friendly. Because of the graphic nature of it, it helps you to be able to manage complicated systems much easier.

Better support for integration with open-source technologies is needed. For example, I try to use open-source databases such as Postgres and MySQL instead of Microsoft, DB2, or Oracle. However, I think it's lacking in capability from the tool to the database.

In the future, I would like to see data manipulation capability where you can actually write SQL queries and manipulate data from directly within the tool.

I have been using SAP PowerDesigner for more than ten years.

PowerDesigner is definitely stable. I have been using it for a long time and I have had no crashes. It just works.

Because SAP is pushing it and they use it as a design tool, I think it's very scalable for collaboration. However, I have no idea in practice because I'm just using it myself.

In the time that I have been using this product, it has never been necessary to contact technical support. I think that the help files, along with what you can find using Google, are explanatory enough.

The two other products that I have used are erwin Data Modeler and Enterprise Architect. I switched because of the scope and the user-friendliness of the tool. PowerDesigner used in conjunction with SQL Server is quite amazing. They work well together.

The initial setup is straightforward. There's nothing complex about it.

It will take some time to teach yourself how to use the product, but the installation is nothing. It's an hour or two to deploy it.

I bought the software outright and do not pay a licensing fee.

I have been looking for a tool to interface seamlessly into an open-source environment, and what I have found to be lacking is a visual database prototype tool. I would like something like, for example, Microsoft SQL Server Management Studio that can access the data instead of just the definitions for it. I am constantly searching for an open-source tool that can do not just modeling, but data manipulations or data definitions in a better way.

I certainly recommend using this product, although it wasn't cheap so cost is a consideration. Price is a complaint that I have for most design tools in the IT world, as most of them are extremely expensive. Corporations and large companies can use them effectively.

For me, the GUI is definitely a pleasure. At the same time, there is a steep learning curve when dealing with bigger and bigger systems. Fortunately, the tool helps with that.

I would rate this solution a seven out of ten.