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erwin Data Intelligence pros and cons

Vendor: Quest Software

4.2 out of 5

19 reviews
100% willing to recommend

Pros & Cons summary

erwin Data Intelligence automates ETL flows and data table setups, saving time and enhancing efficiency. It centralizes metadata management for easier data lineage tracking and governance across various levels. While it generates DDL rapidly, the SDK requires improvement due to LDK-level inconsistencies. Integration with erwin Data Modeler and Oracle Database shows challenges, and data quality assessment needs third-party tools, complicating evaluation and code set mapping management.

Buyer's Guide

Get pricing advice, tips, use cases and valuable features from real users of this product.

Prominent pros & cons

PROS

erwin Data Intelligence allows the automation of tasks such as setting up ETL flows and defining data tables, which saves significant time and effort in data management.

It provides a central source of truth for metadata, making it easy to manage mappings and data lineage.

The tool enhances data governance by enabling different governance levels, from business terms to code set mapping.

It offers capabilities for capturing and organizing diverse business metrics into catalogs, aiding in strategic decision-making.

erwin Data Intelligence generates DDL quickly, automating the process and significantly reducing the time required for data-related tasks, improving efficiency.

CONS

SDK needs improvement as inconsistencies were found at the LDK level during automation scripts with multiple API calls.

Data assessment requires third-party components and a separate license, making comprehensive data quality evaluation challenging.

Integration with erwin Data Modeler is not smooth and required experimentation for proper functionality.

Code set mapping workflow is clunky, causing management difficulties due to locked mappings.

Oracle Database implementation has caused issues that might not occur with SQL Server.

erwin Data Intelligence Pros review quotes

reviewer1270386

Solution Architect at a pharma/biotech company with 10,001+ employees

Jan 22, 2020

The possibility to write automation scripts is the biggest benefit for us. We have several products with metadata and metadata mapping capabilities. The big difference when we were choosing this product was the ability to run automation scripts against metadata and metadata mappings. Right now, we have a very high level of automation based on these automation scripts, so it's really the core feature for us.

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RD

Data Architect at NAMM California

Jan 29, 2020

The biggest benefit with erwin DI is that I have a single source of truth that I can send anybody to. If anybody doesn't know the answer we can go back to it. Just having a central location of business rules is good.

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SA

Sr. Manager, Data Governance at a insurance company with 501-1,000 employees

Jan 30, 2020

They have just the most marvelous reports called mind maps, where whatever you are focused on sits in the middle. They have this wonderful graphic spiderweb that spreads out from there where you can see this thing mapped to other logical bits or physical bits and who's the steward of it. It's very cool and available to your business teams through a portal.

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erwin Data Intelligence

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reviewer1328286

Data Program Manager at a non-tech company with 201-500 employees

Apr 12, 2020

There is a wide range of widgets that enables the user to find the proper information quickly. The presentation of information is something very valuable.

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TH

Tracy Hautenen Kriel

Architecture Sr. Manager, Data Design & Metadata Mgmt at a insurance company with 10,001+ employees

Oct 28, 2020

The data management is, obviously, key in understanding where the data is and what the data is. And the governance can be done at multiple levels. You have the governance of the code sets versus the governance of the business terms and the definitions of those business terms. You have the governance of the business data models and how those business data models are driving the physical implementation of the actual databases. And, of course, you have the governance of the mapping to make sure that source-to-target mapping is done and is being shared across the company.

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JM

Analytics Delivery Manager at DXC

Oct 26, 2020

We use the codeset mapping quite a bit to match value pairs to use within the conversion as well. Those value pair mappings come in quite handy and are utilized quite extensively. They then feed into the automation of the source data extraction, like the source data mapping of the source data extraction, the code development, forward engineering using the ODI connector for the forward automation.

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MN

Manoj Narayanan

Practice Director - Digital & Analytics Practice at HCL Technologies

Dec 14, 2022

erwin has tremendous capabilities to map right from the business technologies to the endpoint, such as physical entities and physical attributes, from a lineage standpoint.

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Senior Director at a retailer with 10,001+ employees

May 16, 2021

Being able to capture different business metrics and organize them in different catalogs is most valuable. We can organize these metrics into sales-related metrics, customer-related metrics, supply chain-related metrics, etc.

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Business Intelligence BA at a insurance company with 10,001+ employees

May 24, 2021

Overall, DI's data cataloging, data literacy, and automation have helped our decision-makers because when a source wants to change something, we immediately know what the impact is going to be downstream.

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reviewer1935849

Architect at a insurance company with 10,001+ employees

Aug 10, 2022

It is a central place for everybody to start any ETL data pipeline builds. This tool is being heavily used, plus it's heavily integrated with all the ETL data pipeline design and build processes. Nobody can bypass these processes and do something without going through this tool.

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Show 9 more reviews (out of 19)

erwin Data Intelligence Cons review quotes

reviewer1270386

Solution Architect at a pharma/biotech company with 10,001+ employees

Jan 22, 2020

The SDK behind this entire product needs improvement. The company really should focus more on this because we were finding some inconsistencies on the LDK level. Everything worked fine from the UI perspective, but when we started doing some deep automation scripts going through multiple API calls inside the tool, then only some pieces of it work or it would not return the exact data it was supposed to do.

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RD

Data Architect at NAMM California

Jan 29, 2020

The fact that I sometimes have to go in and out of different applications, even though it's all part of the whole erwin suite, perhaps means it could be architected a little bit better. I think they do have some ideas for improvements there.

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SA

Sr. Manager, Data Governance at a insurance company with 501-1,000 employees

Jan 30, 2020

There are a lot of little things like moving between read screens and edit screens. Those little human interface type of programming pieces will need to mature a bit to make it easier to get to where you want to go to put the stuff in.

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erwin Data Intelligence

Free Report: erwin Data Intelligence Reviews and More

Learn what your peers think about erwin Data Intelligence. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: December 2025.

879,310 professionals have used our research since 2012.

reviewer1328286

Data Program Manager at a non-tech company with 201-500 employees

Apr 12, 2020

If we are talking about the business side of the product, maybe the Data Literacy could be made a bit simpler. You have to put your hands on it, so there is room for improvement.

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TH

Tracy Hautenen Kriel

Architecture Sr. Manager, Data Design & Metadata Mgmt at a insurance company with 10,001+ employees

Oct 28, 2020

The metadata ingestion is very nice because of the ability to automate it. It would be nice to be able to do this ingestion, or set it up, from one place, instead of having to set it up separately for every data asset that is ingested.

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JM

Analytics Delivery Manager at DXC

Oct 26, 2020

One big improvement we would like to see would be the workflow integration of codeset mapping with the erwin source to target mapping. That's a bit clunky for us. The two often seem to be in conflict with one another. Codeset mappings that are used within the source to target mappings are difficult to manage because they get locked.

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MN

Manoj Narayanan

Practice Director - Digital & Analytics Practice at HCL Technologies

Dec 14, 2022

Another area where it can improve is by having BB-Graph-type databases where relationship discovery and relationship identification are much easier.

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Senior Director at a retailer with 10,001+ employees

May 16, 2021

There may be some opportunities for improvement in terms of the user interface to make it a little bit more intuitive. They have made some good progress. Originally, when we started, we were on version 9 or 10. Over the last couple of releases, I've seen some improvements that they have made, but there might be a few other additional areas in UI where they can make some enhancements.

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Business Intelligence BA at a insurance company with 10,001+ employees

May 24, 2021

There is room for improvement with the data cataloging capability. Right now, there is a list of a lot of sources that they can catalog, or they can create metadata upon, but if they can add more then that would be a good plus for this tool.

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reviewer1935849

Architect at a insurance company with 10,001+ employees

Aug 10, 2022

We still need another layer of data quality assessments on the source to see if it is sending us the wrong data or if there are some issues with the source data. For those things, we need a rule-based data quality assessment or scoring where we can assess tools or other technology stacks. We need to be able to leverage where the business comes in, defining some business rules and have the ability to execute those rules, then score the data quality of all those attributes. Data quality is definitely not what we are leveraging from this tool, as of today.

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Show 9 more reviews (out of 19)

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Product Categories

Data Governance

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Microsoft Purview Data Governance vs erwin Data Intelligence

Varonis Platform vs erwin Data Intelligence

Collibra Platform vs erwin Data Intelligence

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