Sparx Pro Cloud Server vs erwin Data Modeler by Quest comparison

erwin by Quest and Sparx Systems are both solutions in the Enterprise Architecture Management category. erwin by Quest is ranked #3 with an average rating of 8.1, while Sparx Systems is ranked #15 with an average rating of 9.0. erwin by Quest holds a 10.7% mindshare in AM, compared to Sparx Systems’s 0.4% mindshare. Additionally, 95% of erwin by Quest users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 100% of Sparx Systems users who would recommend it.

erwin Data Modeler by Quest

Read 39 erwin Data Modeler by Quest reviews

4,005 Views
2,220 Comparison Views

95% willing to recommend

Sparx Pro Cloud Server

Read 3 Sparx Pro Cloud Server reviews

247 Views
141 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

erwin Data Modeler by Quest

Sparx Pro Cloud Server

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Nov 3, 2024

erwin Data Modeler by Quest and Sparx Pro Cloud Server are in the data modeling and management category. Sparx Pro Cloud Server appears to have the upper hand due to its broader feature set and capabilities.

Features: erwin Data Modeler by Quest's flexibility, intuitive interface, and advanced metadata management make it favorable for data-centric users. Sparx Pro Cloud Server distinguishes itself with extensive diagramming tools, robust collaboration features, and numerous integrations, catering more to enterprise-wide needs.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: erwin Data Modeler by Quest offers a simpler deployment process and reliable customer support. However, Sparx Pro Cloud Server, although more complex to set up, provides valuable documentation and training resources fit for a distributed environment.

Pricing and ROI: erwin Data Modeler by Quest incurs higher initial setup costs, but its streamlined functionality offers high long-term ROI. Sparx Pro Cloud Server, with lower upfront investment, shows promising ROI due to its comprehensive feature range, making it ideal for organizations looking to build an integrated system.

To learn more, read our detailed Sparx Pro Cloud Server vs. erwin Data Modeler by Quest Report (Updated: April 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Sparx Pro Cloud Server vs. erwin Data Modeler by Quest

April 2025

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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 Enterprise Architecture Management

3rd

Average Rating

8.6

Reviews Sentiment

7.2

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Business Process Design (9th)

Sparx Pro Cloud Server

Ranking in Enterprise Architecture Management

15th

Average Rating

8.4

Reviews Sentiment

7.1

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2025, in the Enterprise Architecture Management category, the mindshare of erwin Data Modeler by Quest is 10.7%, up from 9.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Sparx Pro Cloud Server is 0.4%, down from 0.8% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Enterprise Architecture Management

Featured Reviews

JorgeSanz

Data Governance Senior Advisor at Abu Dhabi National Oil Company

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.

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Pawel-Gawronski

Enterprise Architect at BEC

A cloud SaaS solution for collaboration with customer support

There could be improvement in connecting to and securing this connection. Spark is not up to date on its Insight dashboard compared to competitors, but this impacts the digital experience. It is important for the team to continue working on this tool without disruption. So maybe this is an area for improvement to have a better Insight.

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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"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."

"They have a lot of features and the most up-to-date technology integration, which I haven't seen in other products."

"We find that its ability to generate database code from a model for a wide array of data sources cuts development time. The ability to create one model in your design phase and then have it generate DDL code for Oracle or Teradata, or whichever environment you need is really nice. It's not only nice but it also saves man-hours of time. You would have to take your design and just type in manually. It has to take days off out of the work."

"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."

"One of the best aspects of the tool is its reverse engineering capability."

"The logical model gives developers, as well as the data modelers, an understanding of exactly how each object interacts with the others, whether a one-to-many, many-to-many, many-to-one, etc."

"The most valuable feature is the physical or visual representation of the database, showing the tables, the columns, the foreign keys, and the ability to generate DDL, so you can physically implement databases."

"There is absolutely no problem with the stability."

More erwin Data Modeler by Quest pros

"The solution's most valuable feature is ArchiMate which I use daily."

"We have found the technical support to be helpful."

Cons

"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."

"The solution's reporting side needs to be improved."

"The reverse engineering in Oracle Databases needs improvement, as there are issues."

"I'd really like to see the PDF function become available. It would make my life much easier than what it is at the moment because whenever I need to collaborate with people that do not have erwin, I have to go through the wonkiness of going to Word and then save it from Word into PDF. There's a lot of differences between erwin 4.4 and 2020."

"Some Source official systems give us DDLs to work with and they have contents not required to be part of the DDL before we reverse engineer in the erwin DM. Therefore, we manually make changes to those scripts and edit them, then reverse-engineer within the tool. So, it does take some time to edit these DDL scripts generated by the source operational systems. What I would suggest: It would be helpful if there were a place within the erwin tool to import the file and automatically eliminate all the unnecessary lines of code, and just have the clean code built-in to generate the table/data model."

"erwin is not as robust as a data warehousing project I've been on in the past."

"It is not a very stable solution. I rate the stability five out of ten."

"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."

More erwin Data Modeler by Quest cons

"The user-friendliness could be even better."

"The solution should allow easier access with enhanced customization options for web page DHTML."

Pricing and Cost Advice

"erwin is expensive compared to other solutions. We are paying almost $6,000 per seat a month."

"I don't specifically know what we're paying now. About three years ago, in another organization, I have this memory of 6,000 AUD a seat or something like that, but I am not sure. In the mid-2000s, it was something like 1,200 AUD a seat. I get the impression that there was a price jump when it was spun off from CA as a separate company, which is understandable, but it could sometimes be a barrier in some organizations picking it up. I haven't talked to erwin people yet, but I'm going to suggest to them that they could perhaps think of having an entry-level product that is priced a bit lower, and then, you can buy the extra suite."

"erwin Data Modeler by Quest is an expensive solution."

"There are no costs in addition to the standard licensing fees."

"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."

"Pricing is very high compared to any other product."

"Price-wise, erwin Data Modeler is okay. You can purchase a single license and it is not very expensive."

"The tool is expensive."

More erwin Data Modeler by Quest pricing and cost advice

"The solution's Ultimate Plan costs $399 per year."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

19%

Manufacturing Company

10%

Government

Computer Software Company

No data available

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

No data available

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.

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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.

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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...

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What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Sparx Pro Cloud Server?

We're paying 15 dollars per user per month for large teams, which is more expensive than the competition, but it has more features, such as cloud VPN and testing. There is no other cost apart from ...

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What needs improvement with Sparx Pro Cloud Server?

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What is your primary use case for Sparx Pro Cloud Server?

Firstly, we use this solution to enable collaboration among our international teams. Our applications are in the cloud, and most issues are on AWS. We have a central place to store and work on our ...

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Comparisons

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Compared 14% of the time

Visio vs erwin Data Modeler by Quest

Compared 8% of the time

Sparx Systems Enterprise Architect vs erwin Data Modeler by Quest

Compared 7% of the time

More erwin Data Modeler by Quest Competitors

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Product Reports

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erwin Data Modeler by Quest

April 2025

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Enterprise Architecture Management

March 2025

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Also Known As

erwin DM

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Overview

erwin pioneered data modeling, and erwin Data Modeler (erwin DM) remains trusted, award-winning software for data modeling and database design, automating complex and time-consuming tasks. Use it to discover and document any data from anywhere for consistency, clarity and artifact reuse across large-scale data integration, master data management, metadata management, Big Data, business intelligence and analytics initiatives – all while supporting data governance and intelligence efforts.

erwin by Quest

Share, review and inform

Pro Cloud Server opens your entire enterprise to your modeling efforts, enabling stakeholders to have secure access for discussion and review. WebEA, hosted on Pro Cloud Server, complements Enterprise Architect by providing a real-time view of project content, anywhere, anytime....

Sparx Systems

Sample Customers

Premera, America Honda Motors, Aetna, Kaiser Permanente, Dental Dental Cali, Cigna, Staples

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Buyer's Guide

Sparx Pro Cloud Server vs. erwin Data Modeler by Quest

April 2025

Free Report: Sparx Pro Cloud Server vs. erwin Data Modeler by Quest

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