We performed a comparison between erwin Data Modeler by Quest and SAP PowerDesigner 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.
"The solution is good for organizing the data and the scripting part is very powerful. It's easy to create technical scripts for models."
"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."
"When you're getting down to the database level, where you're building a design and you're creating DDL out of it, or you're going in the other direction where you're reaching into system catalogs and bringing things back, that starts to really require specialization. Visio isn't going to reverse-engineer that for you. Those features in erwin are valuable."
"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."
"It supports a wide variety of databases, including the latest ones. We have chosen to go for a cloud-based database, and it supports that, which is very useful."
"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."
"They have a lot of features and the most up-to-date technology integration, which I haven't seen in other products."
"The modeling portion of the tool is the most valuable. There are some notes, naming standards, and other functions that we use as well. There's a whole boatload of functionality in this thing and we use maybe 10% of it. It seems to be pretty common that not all the functionality is fully utilized. But it's just got gobs and gobs of stuff that you can implement if you so choose to."
"Very good repository features."
"SAP PowerDesigner is an excellent tool that does what I need it to do. What I like most about it is that it's stable, fast, and easy to understand."
"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."
"This solution has good tools for big data, where you can manage large and complex databases."
"The most useful feature has been the detailed possibility to model almost anything regarding physical 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."
"I mostly work on the conceptual and logical side of things, and I enjoy how easy it is to use."
"The solution is a very pragmatic tool. It's quite easy to use."
"I would like the solution to be less rigid in terms of its theory."
"The solution's model mark could be better because it crashes sometimes."
"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."
"We can only get licenses through partners."
"The erwin ETL functionality has room for improvement when it comes to mapping databases with a classic entity-relationship model to a data warehouse model."
"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 solution's reporting side needs to be improved."
"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."
"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."
"The data governance should be improved, like ER/Studio."
"I've tried to use Power Designer to bring in images, which didn't work very well at all."
"There are many areas of this solution that needs to be changed."
"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."
"It would be helpful if there were glossary, catalog and governance tools. It would help make it a true end-to-end product."
"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."
"The solution is very, very expensive. It would be ideal if it was a more affordable product."
erwin Data Modeler by Quest is ranked 3rd in Enterprise Architecture Management with 37 reviews while SAP PowerDesigner is ranked 4th in Enterprise Architecture Management with 32 reviews. erwin Data Modeler by Quest is rated 8.6, while SAP PowerDesigner is rated 8.0. 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 SAP PowerDesigner writes "It has a good repository and is stable, fast, and flexible". erwin Data Modeler by Quest is most compared with IDERA ER/Studio, Visio, Lucidchart, Sparx Systems Enterprise Architect and AWS Well-Architected Tool, whereas SAP PowerDesigner is most compared with Sparx Systems Enterprise Architect, Visio, IDERA ER/Studio, LeanIX and MEGA HOPEX. See our SAP PowerDesigner vs. erwin Data Modeler by Quest report.
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15 years ago was the one time I chose to use PowerDesigner over Erwin Data Modeler was for a project where we have hundreds of pl/sql ETL scripts that needed to be run in a specific order for specific tables. PowerDesigner had the ability to store the pl/sql within the data model and prioritize/order the script run sequence. This meant that we could count on PowerDesigner to automatically generate the ddl and pl/sql code in the correct run order, rather than manually maintaining a spreadsheet with the script order and running each script manually, a VERY labor intensive process. I don't know if PowerDesigner still has that capability.
With all of the ways we have to program and perform ETL, Erwin Data Modeler has been my tool of choice for any other project throughout the years. Protecting intellectual property and transparently sharing data model information with other modelers by saving the the models in a centralized location (i.e. Model Mart) is important for any company. Making the data model diagrams transparently accessible via Web Portal is another important step in ensuring both technical and business users understand the structure and relationships of the data contains within a data store. Lastly, making the data model metadata available via the Erwin Data Intelligence Suite enables both technical and business users to completely understand everything about the data and data store: Business Glossary, Reference Data, Governance, Data Quality, Data Mapping, and especially automating data lineage and impact analysis.