SAP PowerDesigner Reviews

I was working with Bosch, where I was part of the enterprise data modelling team, and we used SAP PowerDesigner as a data modelling tool. We mainly concentrated on the manufacturing domain, so we followed the data modelling approach using Data Vault 2.0. So the organization told us to use SAP PowerDesigner as a data modelling tool. There are competitors for SAP PowerDesigner tools like Urban and many more, but our organization decided on SAP PowerDesigner. With this tool, a framework was designed by one of the organizations in Germany, and Bosch partnered with them to generate scripts automatically. SAP PowerDesigner also provides the flexibility to create logical and conceptual data models. As a team, we were mainly focused on creating physical data models using SAP PowerDesigner.

Once you create physical data models, you can check out the DDL scripts and implement them on your Oracle databases. We used Oracle databases, but SAP PowerDesigner supports a lot of databases.

It is hard for a new person to learn how to use SAP PowerDesigner, but once they understand and practice, it's pretty simple to use SAP PowerDesigner, and it's easy to take out the DDL scripts.

The user interface could be more user-friendly. We have not worked with other models, but the user interaction or the visualization of the tool should be improved because it looks like an old tool, even though it provides good features. A visualization feature would attract users and make it easier to use.

The automation could be improved because it does not provide the framework or automation but provides data modelling capability. So you have to do it on your own or get a third-party contractor to develop the automation. For us, a company integrated with Bosch and generated a stable framework. Other tools provide automation capability available on cloud.

There was a pain point when we downloaded, configured and installed the software in our local systems. So we thought to put this particular software somewhere in a central system where we can directly access using Citrix workspace because when you install this in your local systems, there is a probability that you will not be able to check in your developments to the central repository.

Organizations that are using SAP PowerDesigner or are thinking of using it may have a big problem if they are moving particular projects to offsite centers or offsite nations. We faced many issues with check-ins of our models where the central server was sitting in Germany. We were located in India, and it was hard or near impossible to check in our models after our developments. We were dependent on our German colleagues to check in our models. We used to send requests via Outlook or Microsoft Teams, and then they would check in the models on our behalf. So we started using Citrix workspace, and there was a central system where SAP PowerDesigner was installed for us. We used it to develop our models and to do the check-ins and checkouts.

We used this solution at my previous employer for about two years.

It is a stable solution, and I rate the stability a seven out of ten. We were initially facing technical issues due to authentication only. Aside from that, there were scenarios where we could not check in because we had to check in our models only using the checked-out models. We could copy our models, create a new copy, and then check in. So there are some technical things that developers should understand because you have to check in the model, but you cannot check in the same model with a different identity.

There will be a different number that the schedule gets generated for each model, and you can rename a new model and try to check in, but it will not. So, developers should know how to use the tool rather than guessing and playing. There were scenarios where other colleagues faced other issues, but I believe most issues we faced were related to authentication. Aside from that, we have not faced any major issues.

It is upon an application, and it is based on licensing. So it is just a tool for developing your data model. So scaling depends on the number of licenses the organization purchases and how many users there are. So if they purchase 20 licenses and 30 people are using them, they will face an issue. I believe about 40 users were using it.

We had no direct connection or contact with the SAP PowerDesigner team. Some of my colleagues have a few connections in Germany, but if we had faced any issues, we would have reached out to my colleagues, and they internally would have reached out to SAP.

I rate the setup a five out of ten. It was difficult to set up because we had to apply a lot of patch files one after the other. In addition, there was an issue with using the SAP PowerDesigner in our local systems and checking in to a central server or a central repository in Germany or some countries. I am unsure if this was an issue with the Bosch team or if other organizations had the same issue. PowerDesigner should work towards fixing this and providing access to the users through Citrix workspace or other version machines.

We completed the setup ourselves. Some guidelines were written by colleagues who had used the solution earlier, so we followed them and implemented them. It takes a long time to install, and you will not be sure whether it works fine. So organizations should prefer to go via virtual machines because if your local system crashes, you must start from scratch to install the software. But if that particular software is installed somewhere on a server, it would be better than installing it in local systems.

I rate this solution a six out of ten.

I used SAP PowerDesigner as a tool for document folder flow charts and other features.

SAP PowerDesigner is helpful because you can create any type of document.

The most valuable features of SAP PowerDesigner are the creation the flow charts and folders. It is a powerful tool.

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.

In a future release, more features should be added. Other solutions have more features.

I have been using SAP PowerDesigner for approximately two years.

I rate the stability of SAP PowerDesigner a seven out of ten.

I rate the scalability of SAP PowerDesigner a six out of ten.

We have approximately 200 to 300 in the company but not everyone uses it. We will increase usage depending on the company's requirements.

The support from SAP PowerDesigner is great.

I rate the support from SAP PowerDesigner an eight out of ten.

Positive

I did not use other solutions similar to SAP PowerDesigner.

The initial setup of SAP PowerDesigner requires some training before they can work on it. It would be beneficial for those who want to work with the took to take a one month or 20-day training course.

The price of the solution is low. 

I rate the price of SAP PowerDesigner an eight out of ten.

I have not evaluated other solutions before using them. I use whatever the client specifies.

We use 10 to 20 experienced people for the maintenance of the solution. However, the amount of people needed depends on what needs to be worked on. We have other teams that work on the tool, such as developers.

My advice to others is they should try out the solution, it's a good tool. This solution is priced low and if it works for their use case then it is better than paying for a more expensive solution. If your requirements are too high, you can't expect this tool to meet all of your needs, it does not have all the features. You have to go for other options if your requirement needs more features.

I rate SAP PowerDesigner a seven out of ten.

We use this solution for business analysis and to generate use cases. Each model is developed based on all the requirements that are gathered. There's a small install for the setup on each machine and then we operate through a shared license server that is connected to it.

One of the things that I'm working on right now is improving the health of our models because a number of them are old. We're missing a lot of information that we need as we look towards an enterprise level data lake. This will allow us to better relate ownership of the data to a particular area within ODOT.

I've used the reverse engineering feature a lot. I can take a look at the structure of the database and what relationships it has. Some of the general modeling functions are also really valuable. It's pretty simple to show people how to add objects to model and develop relationships.

I'm trying to find some of the requirements for data cataloging within Power Designer. There are some minor things that could be easier. We're writing up procedures to bring all the modeling back into one group as this reduces delays in production.  

We have experienced one issue with stability which was connected to licensing. For two or three days, nobody could get in and use the tool. Assuming we do not experience a similar incident, I would rate them a seven or eight out of ten for stability. We are no longer signed up for support from Power Designer and so we have needed to determine our own workarounds in these situations which takes some time.

The technical support for this solution is good. When we developed the instructions, we had meetings with them and changed the order of some of the things and added things that they wanted to see. 

I would rate the support for this solution an eight out of ten. 

Positive

The initial setup is straightforward. We had a problem a few years ago when we moved our from a SQL server. Out of 16 installs, we had three failures and that was because people changed from the standard setup.

We have two Power Designer administrators and I am one of them. When anyone checks in, it creates a change list. 

I would rate this solution a seven out of ten. 

I use SAP PowerDesigner for data warehouse projects and governance projects, including physical, logical, and conceptual designs.

It is more flexible than other tools and user-friendly, making it easy to adapt. It's valid on the enterprise side as I can create data dictionaries or business glossaries and easily extend them to both business and IT sides. The solution also facilitates easy export and publish my work in different formats like HTML or PDF. PowerDesigner supports various databases, allowing for easy reverse engineering, including Oracle, SAP, Microsoft, etc. PowerDesigner fetches all objects into the design model for further needs.

SAP PowerDesigner makes data governance easy to use. IT or business users can quickly implement database or glossary objects by editing and publishing entries and creating naming standards for both database and business glossary sides. It allows dictionary or naming standard abbreviations to be easily applied to all objects, including conceptual, logical and physical models.

The reverse engineering feature allows you to create a project in your database and show it logically by publishing it for all users in your enterprise. It lets you directly connect PowerDesigner to your databases, whether it's Microsoft or Oracle, and fetch all objects, including primary keys, entities, and stored procedures. You can then edit these objects in your model.

Based on my experience with SAP PowerDesigner, I'd like to see improvements in the DMM feature. Even if I have an ETL tool, I'd like the DMM options to directly connect to ETL tool repositories like Azure Sentinel, Informatica, or ODI, helping me map all object relationships, like source-to-target mapping, directly from the ETL tool's repository.

Forward engineering in the DMM options is one area where PowerDesigner could add functionality. While it's excellent for showing source-to-target mapping and understanding data lineage, it would be helpful if it could also handle ETL functions and coding. I wish I could implement ETL operations within PowerDesigner, especially since I've already mapped and designed everything. Having everything in one place, including the ability to forward engineer databases and work on ETL coding, would be incredibly useful.

I have been working with SAP PowerDesigner for the past ten years.

Stability is also good; I would rate it as eight out of ten.

For scalability, I'd rate it around eight out of ten.

Technical support is decent, though the response time and quality could be better.

Neutral

The setup process for SAP PowerDesigner is simple.

Overall, I'd rate PowerDesigner an eight out of ten.

I recommend the product to other users.

In one company we used SAP PowerDesigner for documentation and building logical data models and a new platform in the company. Additionally, it was used for documents and resources for the data warehouse. It was a resource and module company and we had to describe every source, table, et cetera. 

SAP PowerDesigner is good because you can generate physical data models after you have a logical data model. It helped us a lot.

The most valuable features of the solution are it's built very well, easy to use, and simple to describe freely what is needed in logical and physical data models.

SAP PowerDesigner could improve by making the repository easier to understand. It is difficult to understand how the repository works because when I used logical models as part of the team, we wanted to use them together and update the older versions of the data model version but it was confusing. The repository needs to be explained.

It would be helpful to have a checking system on the objects that are generated from the physical data model on the specific database to help see if there is a difference on the database side and on the SAP PowerDesigner documentation side.

I have been using SAP PowerDesigner for approximately five years.

SAP PowerDesigner is a highly stable solution. I have been using this solution in many different companies for over five years with no stability concerns.

I rate the stability of SAP PowerDesigner a ten out of ten.

The scalability of SAP PowerDesigner is good. This solution is used in platforms that are more likely to expand over time.

There are 10 people in the company that is using this solution and it is used frequently.

I rate the scalability of SAP PowerDesigner a ten out of ten.

I have not used the support from SAP PowerDesigner.

I have used Erwin Data Modeler and it was not as intuitive as SAP PowerDesigner. I was attempting to use Erwin Data Modeler by myself and it was difficult to learn.

The main advantage of SAP PowerDesigner compared to other solutions is the various sources of database it can connect and deliver data models, and do reverse engineering. Not every modeler tool can do reverse engineering, forward engineering, versioning, version control, and additional properties on the objects, such as core physical options. I'm using Oracle connectors. You have everything you want to have and you can deliver every object code in SAP PowerDesigner.

It is easy to set up because after you download the installer you click next multiple times and you are finished. You can install every specification test and feature. It has many features, and you can install everything, instead of everything individually, it is easier.

If you want to build logical or physical data models for fun, experience, or studying, it's easy to install and set up.

I rate the initial setup of SAP PowerDesigner a nine out of ten.

We did the implementation of the solution in-house.

It would be beneficial if this tool became more popular for developers in the future.

I rate SAP PowerDesigner a ten out of ten.

I use it for business analysis to understand my clients' business flows. I use the various tools available in SAP and the conceptual data models to analyze and understand the business flow.

The physical database model is definitely the most valuable feature because it describes normalization exactly the way you understand the data, and it deploys it perfectly with open source systems.

Even with Microsoft database systems, it describes the data perfectly. I can just include a picture of the database model into my design specifications, and developers would be able to understand it perfectly.

The focus is more on mainstream development environments, and I see a lack of focus on the open source world. I think SAP PowerDesigner probably interfaces better with SQL Server and Db2 but not with open source databases like PostgreSQL and MySQL.

I'm an Apple user and not a Microsoft user, so I would love to have SAP PowerDesigner be available on macOS and not just on Microsoft. Right now, I am forced to install parallels and run a virtual machine on my Apple.

Yes, it's stable, and I haven't found any bugs. Provided that my work files are stored in the cloud, I can access all the models from both my laptop and desktop computers without a problem. The way that they've designed access to the models is quite good.

The interface is way better with SAP PowerDesigner. Other solutions are limited in their designs. They simply focus on the database, for example, and not on the different types of models.

I would advise you to just start using SAP PowerDesigner because it's intuitive. You have to be a software engineer if you want to use it; you have to know what you're doing. You can't use it as a casual user. However, the models use standards, so they're not difficult to use once you know what you're doing. If you want to design a database, there are other tools that have similar conventions, but SAP's implementation is intuitive and easy to understand. So, my advice is to just directly use it.

Apart from some improvements needed to integrate better with open source systems, SAP PowerDesigner is an excellent tool. It's very easy to use and is very stable. I would give it a rating of nine on a scale from one to ten.

We are using this solution for architecture management.

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.

The versioning system could be improved. We have to identify the connections and there are lots of limits in certain areas, such as the JDBC driver. I do not have a computer able to do the versioning system because we do not have a database to use. We do not have the budget for that. They should use something, such as GitHub, it would be helpful.

I have been using this solution for five years.

Sometimes the server goes down and I am not able to use the tools. The solution could be more stable.

The solution scalability is good.

The initial setup was very easy.

I have evaluated erwin, it has some enhanced features, such as easy publishing.

We plan to migrate to erwin solution in the near future. I would not recommend it.

I rate SAP PowerDesigner a five out of ten.

I use PowerDesigner to take business requirements and model them from a data modeling perspective. We can then take the result and turn it into a physical model in a database like SQL Server or Oracle.

This is a tool that facilitates a more cohesive development. From a design and documentation perspective, it makes sure that all of the databases are the correct version for the code base, without running into issues with things being out of sync or out-of-date compared to production or development. 

I like the property sheet capability and the user-defined attributes that you can set up.

The central repository is helpful because they have the ability to check-in models when working as part of a larger team. It supports versioning, as well.

Checking-in models to the repository, especially when working remotely, is a slow process than can sometimes have problems with models being corrupted. Between the client tool and the repository, the process is very chatty. Consequently, sometimes it takes forever to download a model and if it is corrupted then you won't be able to check it in or out again.

It would be a nice feature if we had the ability to generate a JSON file from a model.

I have been using PowerDesigner for more than 10 years.

If you're just modeling on one computer such as your desktop, or your client's computer, then it is very stable. However, if you are not on your company's network and you are checking in models from a remote location then there can be problems.

I think that the scalability is fine, given that it's for design and development on a project team. On a large project team, we might have 10 or 20 modelers working on it. You don't have thousands or tens of thousands of users, so it scales just fine for what its purpose is.

In my department, we have 10 or 15 users who are data architects or solution architects.

We have somebody internally who supports the platform. We have client licensing, so if there is an issue then we can raise a ticket with the vendor, but that is somebody from another group. My personal impression is that technical support is fine.

I have used other tools like erwin Data Modeler and they have versioning repositories also, but it seems like their check-in and check-out processes are much simpler and much cleaner. The central repository seems to be a little more stable.

The other advantage to erwin is that you can model right in the diagram, which means less clicking. In PowerDesigner, sometimes there are so many property sheets that we are constantly clicking.

When I began using PowerDesigner, it was an independent product. Since that time, SAP acquired it. It is a very solid product that does both data modeling and business process modeling.

My advice for anybody who is implementing PowerDesigner is to make sure that the central repository for versioning models is on a high-bandwidth network with a solid database backing it up.

In summary, this product gives you all of the features that a modeler would require to produce both logical and physical data models. There really is not a lot that is lacking and my only complaint is about the versioning repository. Of course, this is only a problem when we are working remotely. If there is a large model with perhaps 600 tables and 2,500 attributes, then it is going to be very demanding on bandwidth.

I would rate this solution an eight out of ten.