IDERA ER/Studio Reviews

I work in the finance industry, and the use cases for this product are very similar to what I mentioned previously when I discussed being in industrial management. It is simply a different product.

IDERA ER_Studio does a lot more and performs model comparison much better than Erwin. It has less of a footprint and is less intensive on the system than Erwin was, so I would say that is probably the biggest benefit.

I assess the benefits of IDERA ER_Studio's metadata management for my organization as not as good as Erwin's. Erwin's metadata management is better in how it handles data. There is a lot more user involvement in managing the metadata, primarily because in IDERA ER_Studio, the logical and physical models are separately defined in the same file, so you have to map them every single time.

In Erwin, it has a unified structure, so if you make a change in the logical model, it automatically shows up in the physical model. You have to go through a couple of steps in the IDERA model to make sure everything has moved over. While that is not that inconvenient when you are actually doing development, as far as metadata management, that is prone to things getting dropped and missed.

The collaboration tools in IDERA ER_Studio are adequate, but I think with Erwin, there is more of an opportunity for things to crash. Changes can be merged in IDERA more fluidly; however, the locking and sharing are a little bit more defined in Erwin.

I think the learning curve for Erwin might be easier than IDERA ER_Studio, especially with connecting to different models and systems.

It has been about a year or longer since I last used Erwin Data Modeler because I am not in that type of shop. I am currently with an IDERA ER_Studio shop.

I have not used IDERA ER_Studio's support enough to give a good rating on a scale of one to ten. I have only used their webpage for documentation. The documentation is more robust than Erwin's, but their interface is not as intuitive. The caveat is that I have used Erwin consistently for about 25 plus, maybe 30 years, while I have used IDERA ER_Studio spottily in my career. What may be intuitive to me may not be intuitive to someone else.

Negative

I have not used IDERA ER_Studio's impact analysis tools, so I really could not judge that regarding mitigating database risks for security.

I am not on the end as far as the pricing, as this is what the enterprise uses, so that is what I use. Years ago, the costing model was different; it was more of an enterprise type of product, while IDERA was connected to the external system, meaning you had to pay for whatever system, such as if you were connecting to Oracle, you would have one price, and if you connected to SQL Server, it would be another price. That may have changed in the last 10 years.

We are using IDERA ER_Studio with both on-premises and cloud, and that is seamless. I would rate this product an 8 overall.

I have been working with data modeling tools. Personally, I have been working with Erwin for many years now. ER/Studio is something I am currently trying to evaluate for acquiring it for our organization. We are looking to adopt it for organizational use.

Our organization doesn't currently have a data modeling tool. So, this will be a value-add to the organization, especially for developers when they check in and check out their changes. It will help ensure that each one doesn't step on the other.

ER/Studio is excellent for large teams; it scales well to teams of over one hundred plus people. It has strong versioning support and can even integrate with third-party versioning tools like GitHub. It has a rich set of integration options with various products in the market. The tool also supports both logical and physical data modeling, and it has out-of-the-box support for data vault methodologies. ER/Studio allows the enforcement of naming conventions, which is beneficial for maintaining standards within the organization.

ER/Studio lacks a pure cloud option for deployment. Both Erwin and ER/Studio do not have AI or machine learning features for automation. Offering a comprehensive cloud-based version could enhance its usability.

Although I have been using it for a short time now, all along I have been using Erwin.

I find Erwin to be a very stable product, but ER/Studio seems to need to catch up in terms of roadmap and evolution.

ER/Studio is excellent for large teams. It scales well to teams of one hundred plus people.

I cannot comment on customer service as we haven't purchased the tool yet and are still in the evaluation process.

Previously, I used Erwin. It was sufficient for smaller teams, but now that I am in an organization with a larger team, ER/Studio is preferable.

In terms of pricing, ER/Studio is slightly more expensive compared to Erwin, by about five to ten percent.

I have been using Erwin and comparing it with ER/Studio during my evaluation process.

I would strongly recommend ER/Studio for large teams. Erwin is a very stable product, but for smaller teams, it's okay. If I had to rate ER/Studio, I would give it nine out of ten because the absence of a cloud version is a limitation. Overall, I rate this solution 9 out of 10.

We use the solution for data modeling, including both relational and dimensional data models.

The complexities allowed in the models and the expressiveness are the most valuable features of the solution. The solution has a lot of capabilities. I like the fact that it has a scripting language that allows you to automate and write your own scripts.

Since the solution was originally developed in the eighties and nineties and hasn't changed much since then, it could use an overhaul. The solution is not so strong at creating modeling views and database views.

I have been using IDERA ER/Studio since 2018.

There are some areas where the solution could be more stable, and its performance could be better. I think this is mainly due to its legacy environment.

I rate the solution an eight out of ten for stability.

We have five concurrent licenses for IDERA ER/Studio. The solution's scalability is good.

I rate the solution's scalability an eight out of ten. If IDERA were to put the tool into a cloud environment instead of an on-premises environment, then it would be even higher.

The solution's technical support is good. Sometimes, getting the support team to respond takes time.

Positive

I have previously worked with erwin, and I understand its capabilities. IDERA ER/Studio and erwin are rather comparable. They just do things a little differently, but they have basically the same type of enterprise-wide capabilities. I've also looked at some cloud offerings, and they don't have the same level of support for logical models as IDERA ER/Studio or erwin.

The solution's initial setup was not as easy as I had hoped.

On a scale from one to ten, where one is difficult and ten is easy, I rate the solution's initial setup an eight out of ten.

The solution was deployed by me.

The solution’s pricing is high.

The solution has streamlined our data modeling processes quite a bit. It's a central focus in our data modeling and data cataloging efforts. The tool's reverse engineering capability to bring in existing database structures and create models from them has benefitted our data architecture needs. With the tool's data dictionary capability, we're able to maintain consistency in our models, name use, and actual data domains.

The solution's reverse engineering helps with understanding legacy databases. In fact, I've been asked to reverse-engineer several more legacy databases so that we can have them modeled and cataloged. The solution is deployed on the cloud server, but it’s only within our network.

The solution has a lot of capabilities. I like the fact that it has a scripting language that allows you to automate and write your own scripts. I think that's been a big bonus for us. I highly recommend the solution because of its capability for logical models, where you can put your business definitions and logic. While less expensive, some other tools can't do that.

Overall, I rate the solution an eight out of ten.

I am not actively working with the tools discussed. It was for my daughter. She needs to use it. I have been in IT for more than 30 years yet lack knowledge about new tools used for making websites and applications.

It was a very good tool at the time since it was complete. When we built an application, it facilitated the development process by providing the skeleton of the application and the foundation for functions. It allowed for quick and easy development. Additionally, there is a tool called WinDev, which is similar to the one I discussed.

There was no specific mention of areas needing improvement.

I have some past experience with the solution.

The tools evolved well over time with no technical problems. It offered multi-connectivity.

There is plenty of documentation available online for assistance, making it straightforward to address any issues.

Neutral

I have used Borland Delphi, Borland C++, and Pearl at the server net level. These were old technologies, and I no longer put my hands in the code as I am a project manager now.

Regarding pricing, I don't know about the pricing anymore. You just have to connect to the sites. These are commercial sites where you will see the pricing information.

The tools I mentioned include Delphi, Borland C++, Java environment by Embarcadero, and WinDev. Another tool known as Samarin was considered not as good as those by Embarcadero.

My overall rating for the solution is ten out of ten.

This is a good tool to use. I find it to be very useful.

I cannot evaluate any areas for improvement at this time. I need more time to assess this aspect.

I used it for about half an hour each day for ten days.

As of now, I did not experience any stability issues. Everything has went well with the tool.

I did not use any other tool before this one.

I set up this tool and found it to be very simple.

The setup cost may have been around $1500 to $2000.

I would 100% recommend the product. Out of ten, I would rate it nine out of ten.

I used the solution mostly for forward engineering, designing new database structures, and reporting and analytics databases.

The most valuable feature of the solution is generating DDL (data definition language). The solution's data modeling is good because it visualizes and structures business data rather than just building it. IDERA ER/Studio is like a blueprint for the developers and good documentation for the enterprise.

The solution's reporting could be improved because the report writer is terrible. Writing definitions and not being able to generate a nice report to view is useless. To me, that's a huge problem.

I have been using IDERA ER/Studio for five years.

IDERA ER/Studio is a stable solution.

I rate the solution ten out of ten for stability.

I have previously used erwin and PowerDesigner.

The solution’s initial setup is complex.

Two people, including me and a person managing the license, were involved in the solution's deployment.

I have seen a return on investment with the solution. I'm a data modeler and can't work without the solution.

New users must ensure that the report writing will do what they want it to. Other than that, the solution is perfectly fine.

Overall, I rate the solution a seven out of ten.

We use the solution to build data modeling activities. We also use it for reverse engineering with a cloud environment, like Snowflake, for example. We are starting to test integrating it with Collibra.

The data modeling and reverse engineering features are most important to us.

With ER/Studio, the roadmap to send us new versions with the new database is slow. I think it could allow us to test and use new database versions faster.

Sometimes we get new functionalities like, for example, the Collibra integration. We receive these new functionalities, and sometimes we start to test them and we find errors that we need to correct by talking with tech support. I think they allow functionalities to be released before the full tests for catching and correcting errors are completed.

My other point is about the team server. We're using the web portal, and the interface is not so good. The client was modified, and we have the new version. It's good. The client is good to us, but the web portal is using the old UI. It's not as modern, and it's limited.

We found that the new version is slow when compared to the older version. We are trying to investigate what component is causing the slowness, because you have the client access, the repository, the API, the team server, and the web portal.

Getting a single sign-on feature is very important to us. 

My company has been working with ER/Studio for ten years. I was hired one year ago, so I've been working with the solution for a year. 

The product is stable. 

We currently have about 350 users of this solution in our company. We have different people using the tool, including data architects, data modelers, and sometimes we have business customers doing the conceptual data modeling. We have a six-person team, with two specialists and four engineers, that supports this solution. 

The support is not so good but it's not so bad. They help us, but sometimes they are slow to give us an answer. I would rate the support as a five out of ten. 

Neutral

The initial setup was easy, but the migration process is difficult. If you are trying to do an upgrade, for example, from the old version to the new version, you have to upgrade the diagrams manually, and it's a problem. It's not an automatic process.

The original setup was probably done in-house, but I'm not sure because I wasn't at the company at that time. We have two environments, the data center and production. The production environment took about 16 hours to deploy. 

On a scale of one to ten, where one is bad and ten is good, I would rate the licensing cost as a seven or eight. It's not too expensive for us. We have a license, and I think our contract with the vendor includes support. 

I would tell those who are planning to use the tool that I think the interface is okay; there's no problem with it. They need to verify whether the portal has all the functionalities that they are expecting. It's very useful to do a POC to test the functionalities and verify that the database will work okay with the company. 

I would rate this solution as an eight out of ten. 

We maintain all of our enterprise models within ER Studio. This includes our data marts and our local systems. We have multiple people who use the web interface to look at the models.

Using this product has improved the way we maintain our models because they have a place where we can keep all of them, and they can be viewed using the web interface. Essentially, it has helped a lot because we have everything in one place

The feature that we like best is the model publishing.

The web interface allows everybody to view models that are stored on the team server.

The model diagram because very clumsy when you save it on the team server and the models are very big. It becomes difficult to enlarge and difficult to print.

Although they say that it supports concurrent users, we have issues while branching, merging, and performing check-in or check-out. It's not as seamless as it should be.

Now that we are all working from home and our repository is on the cloud servers, we are experiencing issues with performance.

In general, support for big data should be improved.

I have been using this product for the last three to four years.

I would say that it is 70% stable, with the remaining 30% having room for it to be more stable.

It is scalable, given that we are on the cloud. We are able to scale it up whenever we need, especially with the team server, without any issues.

We have at least 50 users who are actively working on models and using the web interface. We also have at least 30 different users who log in and look at our models, as guests. We haven't added them as users within the repository because they don't need access to it. Rather, they just use the web interface to see the models. These users intermittently come in, perhaps once or twice a week, instead of on a daily basis.

The technical support people are pretty good and I would rate them a nine out of ten. Whatever the tool is capable of, they are able to let us know about it.

Prior to IDERA, we were using erwin. We switched for several reasons, starting with the fact that we did not find the erwin web interface allowed us to see the models as well. The team server in IDERA is better and erwin did not have a very good method available for working with models concurrently between multiple users. Overall, we found that ER Studio is much better.

Initially, when we started with the 2016 version, we found that there was a learning curve but ER Studio support helped us with it. The 2018 version upgrade was very quick and nice. The 2017 version took longer than the 2018 upgrade, although it was fine.

My advice to anybody who is considering ER Studio is to look at the size of their models. If they have very large models then it may not be suitable because we are having performance issues in this case. On the other hand, if they have midsized models then I think it is pretty good.

Overall, this product is pretty good. It can certainly be better but it still has features that are quite good.

I would rate this solution a seven out of ten.

It isn't easy to compare the thousands of tables in the model against the database. The tool should improve the synchronization within the large organization

I have been using the product for one month. 

I would rate the tool's stability a ten out of ten. 

I would rate the product's scalability a five out of ten. 

The tech support team is helpful. 

Positive

I have used PowerDesigner before. The tool is not as specialized as Edera. 

The solution's setup is easy and straightforward. It took a couple of minutes to deploy the tool. 

I use the product's trial version. 

I would rate the product a nine out of ten. The tool is simple to use. 

I have experience working with various data architecture tools, and ER/Studio is one of them that I use in this capacity. We use it either to help an organization understand what data it has got or to design a database.

It does the job. However, it doesn't work as well as other solutions.

What needs the most improvement are semantic lineage and usability.

I began working with IDERA ER/Studio approximately eight years ago, and have about three years of experience with it.

I have not been in contact with technical support.

I have experience working with SAP PowerDesigner and erwin.

It is on par with erwin, although I think that I prefer erwin. It is nowhere close to SAP PowerDesigner.

To this point, I've only set up trial versions, and I've not set up or installed it for an enterprise.

However, I'm probably going to be doing that in the next two, three weeks.

The price of this product is okay.

My advice for anybody who is considering this product is to understand what your requirements are of the system, of whatever tool you're going to select. There are loads of people and organizations that have bought this product and used it, and that's dependent upon their requirements, their needs.

Plenty of others have bought SAP PowerDesigner. Personally, and I'm self-employed, or a freelance contractor, I invested more money and decided on SAP Power Designer.

Overall, I don't like any of the features and I think that it's a poor system.

I would rate this solution a five out of ten.