We performed a comparison between Alation Data Catalog and SAP PowerDesigner based on real PeerSpot user reviews.
Find out in this report how the two Metadata Management solutions compare in terms of features, pricing, service and support, easy of deployment, and ROI."Alation Data Catalog's best feature is the SQL query publication."
"The tool's metadata cataloging is the most valuable feature."
"We had some of our data science engineers, who had built out some cloud-based data and data products for users. They were spending a lot of their time, up to 30 to 35% of their time, answering questions about the data and helping people understand how to use it. Once they were able to document that information within Alation, they were only focusing on around 5% of the high-value questions that really couldn't be solved through the catalog itself. It freed them up to be more productive, it made their end-users more productive, and it made the adoption rate of their data products rise more quickly because people were able to get to using them."
"Given the relatively low level of maturity, Alation's most relevant feature at the moment is a user interface that's easy to navigate, which helps us find and understand the data. So while Alation has a lot more functionality, our pain point right now is being able to easily find, understand, and trust the information to use it."
"The most valuable features of Alation Data Catalog are the simplicity in onboarding data sources, the security in securing the data sources, and the way the various users of Alation Data Catalog communicate with each other through a messenger."
"We can customize templates based on our use cases."
"The platform's most valuable features are workflow automation, automated business metadata tagging, technical metadata tagging, and data integration with data quality tools or platforms."
"In PowerDesigner, I primarily use BPM and modeling standards. I find it beneficial for process analysis, although I use data modeling to a lesser extent."
"The solution is a very pragmatic tool. It's quite easy to use."
"The most valuable features of the solution are it's built very well, easy to use, and simple to describe freely what is needed in logical and physical data models."
"The most valuable features of SAP PowerDesigner are the creation the flow charts and folders. It is a powerful tool."
"I do a data-centric design, so for me, the data analysis and design tools are the most valuable features."
"It's a great tool for documentation."
"This solution has good tools for big data, where you can manage large and complex databases."
"It has helped me to develop the as-is state, design its to-be state, and track the capital investment according to gap analysis."
"Alation Data Catalog needs to develop a lot in terms of data governance and would be improved with a built-in interactive data quality solution."
"Alation Data Catalog does not provide end-to-end data lineage."
"The tool's domain model needs to be changed."
"The interface is not user-friendly."
"Alation Data Catalog doesn't support end-to-end lineage. By that, I mean the ability to trace the movement of data from when it first comes into our organization to where it's consumed."
"I know that this has been on their roadmap and they're working on it, but as a whole, there's an untapped reservoir of capabilities within their article features that could be used and built upon."
"The product's data governance features need improvement."
"Technical support could be better and more human."
"Pricing for small consultancies needs improvement. They sustain prices to competing tools. The competing tools tend to do special offers. PowerDesigner SAP doesn't pay much attention to the pricing of it and there are no special offers."
"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."
"This product does not have a good BPMN Modeler."
"The user interface could be more user-friendly."
"There are some minor things that could be easier. We're writing up procedures to bring all the modeling back into one group as this reduces delays in production."
"There are many areas of this solution that needs to be changed."
"Checking-in models to the repository, especially when working remotely, is a slow process than can sometimes have problems with models being corrupted."
Alation Data Catalog is ranked 2nd in Metadata Management with 7 reviews while SAP PowerDesigner is ranked 3rd in Metadata Management with 32 reviews. Alation Data Catalog is rated 7.8, while SAP PowerDesigner is rated 8.0. The top reviewer of Alation Data Catalog writes "The catalog now provides an opportunity for people to come together, to share, and to find". On the other hand, the top reviewer of SAP PowerDesigner writes "It has a good repository and is stable, fast, and flexible". Alation Data Catalog is most compared with Microsoft Purview, Collibra Governance, Informatica Axon, Informatica Enterprise Data Catalog and Collibra Lineage, whereas SAP PowerDesigner is most compared with erwin Data Modeler by Quest, Sparx Systems Enterprise Architect, Visio and IDERA ER/Studio. See our Alation Data Catalog vs. SAP PowerDesigner report.
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