IDERA ER/Studio Reviews

I am primarily using this solution for reverse engineering and database comparisons.

The interface is really simple to use and it allows me to pick and choose which tables I want to reverse engineer.

The visual presentation is a little too colorful and seems that it is dumbed down.

I would like to see support for creating macros in the way that erwin can.

It did not reverse engineer all of the data types correctly, although it was pretty close. The only mistake was with some Oracle table objects, where it incorrectly determined them to be character references.

I have been using the trial edition of IDERA ER Studio for about a month.

I am using ER Studio on a daily basis I think that is very stable. It reverse-engineered a large number of tables all at once, without any problems.

It seems that there would not have to be much for me to do if I wanted to expand my usage. I am the only person in the company using it at this time.

The initial setup is very straightforward and the deployment took less than an hour.

I deployed this solution, myself, and no additional staff is required for maintenance.

I am currently using the trial version, but this solution is definitely worth considering for the price point.

I am in the process of comparing this product to erwin and SAP PowerDesigner.

I would rate this solution a seven out of ten.

Our primary use case of this solution is to design our database.

This solution needs more precise documentation.

We are still testing the stability of the product.

The setup was straightforward but we lacked receipt of support from the solution. 

It is a good product but it needs improvement of the documentation process.

We use it for data modeling.

I always work in big corporations, and what I do is relatively small, it's enhancements. The company that I work for has many products and this is just one of them. 

The main benefit is that you can do things fast with it and that's very important. It helps reduce the overall time and meet the deadlines.

Also, IDERA keeps up with the versions of Oracle and SQL Server that I'm using. I mostly use SQL Server and when there are new features, a new type of index, for example, IDERA also includes them in upgrades of the data modeling tool.

The data modeling module is important to me because I am a database developer and designer. I also take part in designing applications and that always starts with data modeling. It's very fast, reliable, up-to-date, so easy to use, smooth.

The solution is also easy to explain to others and the graphics are good. Finally, the menu choices are also important. There are a lot of them and they are good.

I've not encountered any issues with its stability.

I haven't tested the scalability. I have hundreds of tables, but if you have thousands of tables I don't know how it would work.

The only thing I had an issue with was licensing, and the support was very good. They replied very quickly and it was very smooth.

A long time ago I use erwin. I switched at that time because it became too complicated to use. But that was a long time ago.

No issues with the initial setup.

It is priced fairly. It's around the same as erwin and other competitors' costs.

I evaluated Microsoft Visio.

I would recommend IDERA ER/Studio, but people in my profession are divided by their loyalties. I am loyal to this product, but if you talk to another developer who has been using erwin all his life, that person might say, "Hey, erwin is better." I say ER/Studio is good but in the world of developers, people still have to evaluate things for themselves.

I have no complaints. That's why I've been using it for so long. I rate it a nine out of ten. It's easy and fast to use.

We use it to develop our data warehouse, it's the core server.

It's much easier to develop the database structure and change it on the fly, rather than doing it manually in SQL Server itself. That saves time.

The most important features are logical and physical models that we can compare and develop. Also, the Data Dictionary can be created out of your studio. Finally, database schemas help understand the logic that's behind the scene, behind the SQL tables. Especially when there are a lot of them, the schemas help everyone understand the business processes.

They is a lot of room of improvement. I have emailed and have asked for things but nothing has been done. For example, when there are some links to the external databases, if this database is not structured it is not uploaded. It gives me errors and I cannot see the view that was created on this structure and I cannot change those views, even manually. It skips the views. I have to ignore those views. I cannot re-upload them because it gives me an error.

Another situation is that I need, and I would like to upload, a database with about 3,000 tables. It takes so much time and, finally, it freezes the whole solution so that I actually cannot work with that environment. For the data warehouse, it's fine, because I have 20 or 30 tables. But, when I reverse-engineer the database with 3,000 tables, it freezes and it's hard to upload and reverse-engineer such environments in ER/Studio. 

Those are the two main problems that I encounter today.

I have not encountered any issues with the stability of the product.

As I mentioned, I cannot upload the 3,000-table database. It cannot work with that.

Overall, technical support is okay. It's fast and usually, within four or five hours, I get a reply.

The setup was very easy. Everything was fine during the installation process.

I think the pricing matches what we get from the product. It is good value.

Licensing is a bit of a complicated process because there are three different types of licenses and sometimes it's a bit confusing. For example, when we had to reinstall Windows, and they had to contact support so that they reissue the license for me, that was not easy. It would be easier if I had the number and I could use that number for the computer, somehow. It should connect to the hardware, not to Windows. Because each time I need to update Windows, they need to contact support to reissue licenses or switch to another type of license. They mention that there are additional charges for this. It's not an easy process for users. It should be way easier.

I considered erwin software and I compared different functionalities and installed a trial version before choosing this software. I analyzed and found out that this software would match our needs more, in terms of flexibility and the features that it allows us to do. Also, I like that we have logical and physical modeling. We can have two separate environments for different purposes to develop the structures.

Any advice would depend on the infrastructure, but just start using it more and more. It's mainly for developing databases. If you have a smaller number of tables and all of them are relational, you may not need this software. But, if you have a data warehouse that needs to be developed and you need to frequently implement changes to the databases, it will help.

I rate the solution a rating of eight out of ten. I would consider it one of the best solutions on the market.

We use it for data modeling. 

We have gone from having no diagrams to 50 submodels that we have been able to share with team members and even with our clients.

The modeling part of the tool. We use the solution to create data models which describe our company's data architecture. It is a mix of design upfront when we get changes. We also use the data models after we've implemented changes.

It does help in regards to redundancy with standardization across models.

The solution could be sped up, as it is a little slow (e.g., when it's doing its database compare). 

The screens are a bit outdated. They could use a new look and feel. 

It is stable.

It seems scalable. I have had no issues. The solution doesn't differ much whether we are dealing with a small database or a large one.

The technical support has been fine. I have only used them for licensing issues.

I switched from erwin to ER/Studio. I've also used Oracle Designer, K Studio and Quest Toad.

The initial setup was easy. I have used data modeling tools for the past 20 years, so it was easy to move from other tools to this one. It is an easy data modeling tool to use.

We have two users at my office who are DBAs, myself included. This solution takes up 10 percent of our roles for deployment and maintenance.

Our deployment time depends on the size of the project.

We did the implementation ourselves.

Our implementation strategy was to generate SQL out of the tools, so I could have scripts, which we could then deploy to other environments.

At my previous company using ER/Studio, a database compare took four hours before using the product and 15 minutes after using the product.

Pricing is expensive and on the higher-end.

We also looked at K Studio, Quest Designer, and SAP PowerDesigner. Until we switched over to ER/Studio, we were still working with erwin.

You will save time, switching from whatever product you're using.

It's the best data modeling tool out there. It's fast. It can do what I need it to do.

We connected to Oracle, MySQL, and SQL Server (as data sources) to this solution.

I have plans to expand the use of the built-in tool functionality. However, I haven't had the time.

We use it for data modeling. It is the way we communicate requirements, both for gathering and presenting them. We also use it for putting together our metadata and publishing it.

There are a lot of different ways we use the tool. One of the ways is that we do auditing of what's been billed to production to make sure it matches what we have designed. And it has also improved things in that we have design requirements for the DBA.

Because of all the various things we use it for, it has a high value within the organization.

The most valuable features are the various features for different databases, but mainly those that enable me to represent the database to the development community and the business users.

It would be helpful if they could create a generic JSON database type, as a target database, rather than a specific one like Mongo.

Also, Business Objects doesn't seem to be very stable at the moment, so we've stopped using that.

We did not encounter stability issues in the past but lately, since they're undergoing the rewrite of their internal system, there is some stuff creeping in. We've had some stability issues in the last six months.

We haven't had any scalability issues.

Tech support hasn't been as good lately as it was in the past. It is down to "average."

Prior to using ER/Studio, there was ERwin in-house, but their tech support was horrible, their product was not very good. This was back in the early 2000s, so we switched over because ER/Studio was more flexible. It was able to reverse-engineer a database in under a minute, versus ERwin, which was taking over an hour. That performance was a big issue. Also, early on, and other than in the last six months, Idera's tech support was excellent.

I don't know enough about what the pricing is for other choices out there. I've only really worked on this one tool.

We looked at PowerDesigner, Oracle's native designer, and ERwin. We only did those three, four including ER/Studio. And this tool was, by far, at the time, the better one. Since that time, and now that we have more people in-house, ERwin, evidently, now has more features. I can't confirm or deny that, I don't know because I have never used ERwin. But, at the time, back in 2004, there was a big difference.

I really like ER/Studio personally, so for me, it's a nine out of 10. I like it because it doesn't let you make stupid mistakes - and it's easy to make a stupid mistake. The tool can save you a lot of trouble. The only other tool I used before this was Oracle Designer, back in the 90s. This is way better than that. I haven't used anything else, so I'm a loyal customer.

We use it for data modeling.

When I need a new model, first I determine the sources that should be used, the source database. With a little effort, I create a target table from the source import. The tool then creates the DDL creating the table, the actual physical database.

The engineering portion, developing new models, dimensional models, not relational models. For the data we're hosting, dimensional modeling is more useful.

I've been an ERwin user for quite some time, almost 10 years. One limitation I have found in ER/Studio is that when you want to make some changes to the table definitions, you have to go item by item. You cannot do it globally.

Another issue concerns defining the foreign keys between the different tables. It is a little more tedious in the ER/Studio than in ERrwin. With ERwin it is direct. We can directly relate to different keys but here it is a little more complicated than ERwin.

At this point I haven't had any stability problems. It is consistent. I have never had any trouble with any of the models so far.

Regarding scalability, it only has two options. They should be enough, the relational and dimensional modeling. But we tried to start creating the dimensional model using the relational data that is the source. There should be some flexibility in copying and making changes in the dimensional model.

In terms of the amount of work it can handle, I have not encountered any limitation so far.

Technical support is good. Whatever inquiries I submit, I get a response. I haven't seen any lack of response from the support team.

I used ERwin but it has little problems, such as it's definitely not user-friendly compared to ER/Studio. ERwin's graphical interface is not that friendly.

I also used to use Visio Enterprise Edition but it is not a real, professional modeling tool. For a down-and-dirty job I used to use it and it would give some quick results. Right now, Visio doesn't have any modeling.

The setup is not complex. It is straightforward. If you know modeling, you can really handle it.

The ROI is good. This is the first time we are using the tool at our university and people are liking the results. So far, I haven't seen any complaints. I presented the model to the teams and they appreciated the graphical presentation of it and the output.

In terms of actual ROI numbers, we haven't done that much analysis on this tool. We started it in this team about a year ago. Maybe in future, when we start expanding to more than one license, I would be able to provide numbers, but not at this point.

I find the renewal fee is a little higher, but as a single user, at this point, I'm not finding that to be difficult. In the future, if we want to increase the number of users, maybe we will have to pay too much. I would have to see the server version. At this point, I'm using an individual Developer Edition. In the case of the server edition with four or five users, I don't know how the licensing goes. As an individual user, the renewal is a little costly.

ER/Studio is good. It is really user-friendly and you can start without much training. If modeling is a technique you know, you're familiar with all the concepts, you can sit with the tool and start doing the modeling. Not much training is needed.

Our primary use case is for building out data models. As the DBA, I am also responsible for modeling the OLTP databases as well as our warehouse. Our databases can have well over 200 tables. Add in the views and we can hit 500 objects pretty quickly. We currently have over 30 databases. Without solid models, it would be impossible to manage all the interdependencies.

When validating the model, the ability to provide sub-models to developers, and generate a physical model from the logical, makes it easier to review a logical model with stakeholders.

One of the valuable features is inheritance when joining tables. When setting up RI and domains and rules, ER/Studio does a lot of the grunt, boilerplate code that would otherwise have to be hand-coded.

The number of options can be overwhelming at times. That is not necessarily a bad thing but for a newbie, it can be daunting.

There was one version upgrade, I don't remember which one, that required intervention by the support team, but it was resolved quickly.

No issues with scalability.

Tech support is very helpful. I have only had to engage with them once, as far as I can remember, during an upgrade. They stuck with me until it was resolved. The initial request was responded to the same day and I believe we had it all wrapped up in less than two working days, from the time I submitted the ticket. Part of that was scheduling a time for them to remote into my desktop. Once they were in, it was resolved within 30 minutes.

I previously used ERwin but the support became very lacking.

The initial setup was very simple and easy.

Pricing is on point, but do your due diligence - not every developer needs the tool.

There are a lot of options, so take the time to play with it a bit before you start doing things the hard way.