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OpenText ProVision vs SAP PowerDesigner 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

OpenText ProVision
Ranking in Enterprise Architecture Management
27th
Average Rating
6.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
3
Ranking in other categories
Business Process Management (BPM) (51st)
SAP PowerDesigner
Ranking in Enterprise Architecture Management
5th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.3
Number of Reviews
39
Ranking in other categories
Metadata Management (4th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of October 2025, in the Enterprise Architecture Management category, the mindshare of OpenText ProVision is 0.8%, up from 0.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SAP PowerDesigner is 8.0%, down from 8.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Enterprise Architecture Management Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
SAP PowerDesigner8.0%
OpenText ProVision0.8%
Other91.2%
Enterprise Architecture Management
 

Featured Reviews

reviewer1944672 - PeerSpot reviewer
Good attribute attachment but problems with collaboration
I primarily use OpenText ProVision to create our end-to-end process repository and library for different parts of the organization, capturing the collaboration process to get the right inputs OpenText ProVision's best feature is the capability to attach a variety of attributes and extract and…
Kopparapu Venkatesh Prasad - PeerSpot reviewer
Data modeling tool improves data management and decision-making efficiency
The lineage analysis helps my organization understand data dependencies at an enterprise level. As a SAP PowerDesigner developer, I monitor data across the organization, creating data models that reflect not just one data warehouse but comprehensive organizational information. If you have a small company, lineage helps track employee data across different areas such as finance and HR. Data governance prevents duplicate records, so when tracking employee details, SAP PowerDesigner highlights where data exists in various areas, helping ensure we only use the appropriate sources. This functionality allows us to assess the impact of data deletions effectively. I utilize the reverse engineering capabilities in SAP PowerDesigner. Reverse engineering is helpful, especially since I have colleagues new to SAP PowerDesigner. They often do not know which columns are available where. In SAP PowerDesigner, we can reverse engineer existing data from its source and identify errors in production. For instance, by using Ali's example, if an error arises, I can trace it back to the table and environment it originated from using the reverse engineering feature. The best features of SAP PowerDesigner, from my perspective, are its ability to keep the connectivity between the source database and the new system, data redundancy and availability, and impact analysis. The first feature acts as a bridge between systems. The second allows us to see what data is already available and what new data can be brought in. The third, impact analysis, helps determine how many tables will be affected if a specific table is deleted. This critical point allows us to capture how much data will be lost if any table is removed. Currently, these features shape my daily work. SAP PowerDesigner primarily benefits business management units by offering three types of data modeling structures: conceptual, logical, and physical models. The conceptual model communicates high-level insights to top executives, while logical and physical models address complex queries faced by developers in analytics. SAP PowerDesigner enhances the clarity of our data management significantly, as around 80% of data can be searched quickly and maintained in our SAP systems. The tool enables mapping from end to end, making my work faster and more efficient than using other ER data modeling solutions. The interface allows easy creation of data models and searching for existing data, ensuring I can complete my tasks significantly quicker. The importance of SAP PowerDesigner's collaboration capabilities lies in fostering a unified data management approach. It acts as a unified tool, preventing the duplication of existing data in analytical processes, thus saving both effort and storage costs, which is essential for effective data management. We utilize collaboration capabilities in SAP PowerDesigner with various source systems such as PG admin, Postgres, Oracle, and Snowflake. Recently, we have added Snowflake for cloud data modeling and POC work, streamlining the collaboration process across different systems.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"All the features come as part of a standard license."
"OpenText ProVision's best feature is the capability to attach a variety of attributes and extract and analyze that information."
"The stability of the product is very good."
"The most valuable feature is that it is a very fast reverse engineering process. It does a very expansive comparison."
"It offers a lot of features in one solution. You would have to get multiple other products to bundle together all of the capabilities that you get in just this product."
"I mostly work on the conceptual and logical side of things, and I enjoy how easy it is to use."
"I like the property sheet capability and the user-defined attributes that you can set up."
"In terms of operational efficiency and cause savings or return on investment, I can say that with SAP PowerDesigner, our company saves a lot of time."
"SAP PowerDesigner enhances the clarity of our data management significantly, as around 80% of data can be searched quickly and maintained in our SAP systems."
"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."
 

Cons

"Lacks the ability to have your own in-house developments."
"OpenText ProVision's collaboration management is quite complicated and difficult to use."
"Integrating with or interfacing with other tools like data management tools would be very helpful."
"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."
"I have found the solution not easy to use. When publishing you have to download the HTML, make adjustments against the updated HTML, convert it to HTML, then finally paste the HTML. There is not an on-the-fly function available to bypass the step-by-step converting process that other solutions have."
"It would be helpful if there were glossary, catalog and governance tools. It would help make it a true end-to-end product."
"The solution itself does not need to be improved. However, they could add support for different languages."
"The tool lags in the area of customer service."
"Connectivity can be improved because it's not very good."
"One issue is the cost, as it is a high-priced tool coming from SAP."
"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."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available
"The price of the solution is low."
"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."
"I would like SAP to prove free licenses to professionals that are using the solution. The free version is limited."
"SAP PowerDesigner is cheaper than eriwin."
"The pricing varies based on functionality and users."
"The ROI has been 43%."
"The price of the solution is too expensive. When we asked for certain licenses in different countries it was unattainable."
"When you purchase the license for SAP PowerDesigner, you have to buy one year of support. The tool is worth the money."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Energy/Utilities Company
20%
Construction Company
18%
Manufacturing Company
14%
Comms Service Provider
12%
Financial Services Firm
24%
Government
9%
Computer Software Company
7%
Manufacturing Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business18
Midsize Enterprise6
Large Enterprise18
 

Questions from the Community

Ask a question
Earn 20 points
What do you like most about SAP PowerDesigner?
It allows us to have proper documentation in terms of the databases.
What needs improvement with SAP PowerDesigner?
For collaboration, it's a two-sided coin. SAP PowerDesigner does pretty good at allowing you to compare models. If you have two or more people who work on the same data models, it has a capability ...
 

Also Known As

Metastorm ProVision
Sybase PowerDesigner
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Delta Technology, Export Development Canada, Rompetrol, Salt River Project, AMEC, U.S. Air Force, HP Consulting & Integration
Medtronic, Cirque du Soleil, Antarc, B&G Manufacturing, EarlySense, eBay, Ferrero, James Austin Company, Lenovo, Sagem, RAK Ceramics, Vodafone
Find out what your peers are saying about OpenText ProVision vs. SAP PowerDesigner and other solutions. Updated: September 2025.
869,202 professionals have used our research since 2012.