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No Magic MagicDraw vs erwin Data Modeler by Quest comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Nov 3, 2024

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

erwin Data Modeler by Quest
Ranking in Business Process Design
9th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
39
Ranking in other categories
Enterprise Architecture Management (3rd)
No Magic MagicDraw
Ranking in Business Process Design
14th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.5
Number of Reviews
18
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2025, in the Business Process Design category, the mindshare of erwin Data Modeler by Quest is 2.1%, down from 2.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of No Magic MagicDraw is 3.0%, down from 3.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Business Process Design
 

Featured Reviews

JorgeSanz - PeerSpot reviewer
Streamline data modeling and automate network changes for increased efficiency
The initial setup depends on the tool if you are using the data model environment. Stopping the server could be complex and require strong expertise. If you have everything set up and configured, Erwin is straightforward. You can deploy it in a few hours. In our case, it took a couple of months to address internal conditions, assign machines, and set up everything for the services. I rate the initial setup a six out of ten, where one is difficult and ten is easy.
DiegoRangel - PeerSpot reviewer
Enhanced team communication and design exploration with integrated simulation tools
I was using No Magic MagicDraw to model operations, such as using different kinds of operations with ships or crafts and other systems No Magic MagicDraw facilitated great communication within the team and allowed for the exploration of different designs and architectures, which was beneficial…

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"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."
"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."
"Another feature of erwin is that it can help you enforce your naming standards. It has little modules that you can set up and, as you're building the data model, it's ensuring that they conform to the naming standards that you've developed."
"We can create mappings in erwin and possibly data dictionaries."
"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."
"What has been useful, I have been able to reverse engineer our existing data models to document explicitly referential integrity relationships, primary/foreign keys in the model, and create ERDs that are subject area-based which our clients can use when working with our databases. The reality is that our databases are not explicitly documented in the DDL with primary/foreign key relationships. You can't look at the DDL and explicitly understand the primary/foreign key relationships that exist between our tables, so the referential integrity is not easily understood. erwin has allowed me to explicitly document that and create ERDs. This has made it easier for our clients to consume our databases for their own purposes."
"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."
"The generation of DDL saved us having to write the steps by hand. You still had to go in and make some minor modifications to make it deployable to the database system. However, for the data lineage, it is very valuable for tracing our use of data, especially personal confidential data through different systems."
"The most valuable feature is the ability to quickly build multiple layers within the organizational and business process environments, as well as in the SysML product environments, and converting to files that can be accessed by clients who do not have a system and a teamwork server access."
"The beauty of MagicDraw is that it has a simulation part, so you can simulate your model to validate it. The simulation allows you to bring in code off of an external code that you can write to set up the simulation and execute the code."
"I like the traceability feature. Whoever is working with the product would be sure of the things that could be affected if they decided to affect one of the other companies. For example, let's say that an engineer starts a new project optimization problem by adjusting the thickness of metal sheets. However, the engineers only see a reduced number of affections, but when we use the requirement traceability, they can see the whole picture. That's the main aspect that we were promoting with this tool."
"There is a lot of documentation available on the Internet to understand its functionality."
"The technical support is very good."
"Offers good standards compliance and is user-friendly."
"When you look at it, No Magic is an all-encompassing tool. You can use it for business architecture design. You can use it for deploying an ERP system across your enterprise. However, it was initially designed and developed for model-based systems engineering. That's the systems engineering required to either produce an IP system or product. It takes away the mounds of paper and puts it into a model. It enables you to generate significant savings by modeling that new product or that system before you ever start developing a prototype."
"The most valuable feature is the amount of flexibility that one has to model, which is great for an individual."
 

Cons

"I am not so happy with its speed. Sometimes, it can have problems with connections."
"Although Quest Software has made tremendous strides in recent years, they need to evolve more in the big data arena; erwin Data Modeler could use a little more work when it comes to big database designs."
"There is a lack of local support in the China region."
"The report generation has room for improvement. I think it was version 8 where you had to use Crystal Reports, and it was so painful that the company I was with just stayed on version 7 until version 9 came out and they restored the data browser. That's better than it was, but it's still a little cumbersome. For example, you run it in erwin, then export it out to Excel, and then you have to do a lot of cosmetic modification. If you discover that you missed a column, then you would have to rerun the whole thing. Sometimes what you would do is just go ahead and fix it in the report, then you have to remember to go back and fix it in the model. Therefore, I think the report generation still could use some work."
"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."
"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 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."
"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."
"The cost of upgrading the product should be lower."
"There's lots of documentation. They process multiples of guides. They've got all kinds of guides and documentation out there, but it's kind of hard to find. There are a lot of videos. You can go to YouTube and find videos on how it's been used in different ways, but it just kind of scratches the surface."
"The documentation for MagicDraw and the video tutorials compared to other competitors is an area for improvement."
"One potential area for improvement is the recommendation feature. At times, we face challenges in locating specific features, and we have to reach out for assistance in finding the information we need."
"The licenses are expensive compared to similar tools. At the moment, the user is open to using MagicDraw if it's 15% more than other solutions. If it were to cost any more, they wouldn't use it."
"It's very focused on specific modern languages and it doesn't do necessarily general systems software engineering with diagrams. They should expand the diagram types for the languages."
"There could be a trial version for students."
"For the next releases, I would like to have them import requirements from other sources. They could make it very easy to do that because there are a lot requirements management tools like DOORS, D-O-O-R-S, Dynamic Object Oriented Management. A lot of folks use DOORS to create a requirement. For those requirements you allocate them to a component in the architecture and a verification method for that requirement. It would be good if we could import those into MagicDraw as components so you don't have to manually do these things."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"There are two license options and the pricing is reasonable."
"erwin has this option where you pay a one-time fee and you have the license for six years, which makes sense because I don't upgrade my database engine every other year. I have an application that depends on it. This is something weird about PowerDesigner. There are no additional costs beyond the standard licensing fee."
"There is either a one-year or three-year license. It is not a pay-as-you-go license like a SaaS solution. It’s more of a traditional licensing. They are a little bit on the pricier side."
"There are no costs in addition to the standard licensing fees."
"erwin Data Modeler by Quest is an expensive solution."
"The tool is expensive."
"The price of erwin Data Modeler is very expensive, in particular for this part of the world."
"The solution is expensive."
"The price of No Magic MagicDraw could improve. The price of the solution is too expensive for smaller-sized companies. There should be a better pricing model."
"I rate the pricing a ten out of ten. It is an expensive product compared to software for model-based system engineering."
"In addition to the initial cost, you have to pay annually for support in order to get the upgrades."
"I would say licensing would be anywhere from $3,500 to $6,500 per person or per seat (it's a per seat style license)."
"The licensing is on a yearly basis, and it's expensive."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
19%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Government
9%
Computer Software Company
7%
Manufacturing Company
21%
Government
15%
Aerospace/Defense Firm
11%
Computer Software Company
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about erwin Data Modeler by Quest?
Forward engineering, DDL generation, reverse engineering, and reporting are the most valuable features of the solution.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for erwin Data Modeler by Quest?
The product is expensive. I rate the product’s pricing a nine out of ten, where one is cheap and ten is expensive.
What needs improvement with erwin Data Modeler by Quest?
As a documenting tool, it's solid, though its reporting could be more robust. The reporting mechanisms could be more intuitive regarding report creation. It can generate reports in CSV files, displ...
What do you like most about No Magic MagicDraw?
There is a lot of documentation available on the Internet to understand its functionality.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for No Magic MagicDraw?
Maybe the price is a little bit high for a small company to acquire this tool. However, they offer trial versions and trial licenses for members of INCOSE.
What needs improvement with No Magic MagicDraw?
I don't think there are areas that need improvement.
 

Also Known As

erwin DM
MagicDraw
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

 Premera, America Honda Motors, Aetna, Kaiser Permanente, Dental Dental Cali, Cigna, Staples
Northrop Grumman, Labcorp, Deposco, ClearView Training, IT Services Promotion Agency, Intelligent Chaos, Metalithic Systems Inc., Sodifrance
Find out what your peers are saying about No Magic MagicDraw vs. erwin Data Modeler by Quest and other solutions. Updated: June 2025.
856,873 professionals have used our research since 2012.