Sparx Systems Enterprise Architect Reviews

I use this enterprise solution to trace business needs, analyze information, and for implementation in an international government environment.

Sparx System Enterprise Architect has improved the communication aspect between our architects.

I have found the Meta Model tuning feature useful as it provides me with an overview of all my work needs.

• It should be made Windows compatible. 
• It should have a more appealing UI with zoom in and zoom out features. 
• It needs improvement on the communication part to stakeholders.

It is the perfect tool.

We can easily use it with our new customers.

Its most valuable feature is the Zachman Framework.

The reporting needs improvement.

This solution is the design tool for all enterprise architecture work. It is used to depict the current situation, as well as the future platform, and discuss the gaps required to implement the future platform.

It has provided a single repository for all architecture work. Then, the models can be shared between the architects and other information management users. 

It is customizable, which allows it to be tailored to our environment. It provides several template frameworks. We can customize them based on control parameters to be used by all staff. 

It is weak in regards to data modelling. It does not provide logical or physical data modelling or the ability to migrate from conceptual to physical and back. It is limited in its reverse engineering capabilities. It uses a UML-based modelling technique which does not provide sufficient control of metadata and standards.  

There was no way to implement data integrity and referential integrity constraints. I do not even think it has the domain concept. It does not provide the package concept, so model elements can be inherited by other model elements.

Cheap and affordable tool to generate architecture artifacts. 

This is a well-known vendor whose tool has been used by at least two colleagues on my team.

It has not improved our organization mainly due to the poor diagramming capabilities within the product, which are outdated and look like Visual Studio 2005. As a result, our architecture team constantly reverts back to Visio diagramming (and Visio's inability to reference defined artifacts).

• Its ability to reference and link to components from any diagram.
• The vast number of frameworks supported to get started with modelling.

Improve the following:

• Report builder
• Diagramming capabilities
• Connector routing and layout algorithms
• Inconsistent UI elements must be tidied up with the toolbox gaps removed.
• Alignment and button sizes need to be made consistent. 
  

Recommended features would include:

• A refreshed diagramming canvas (even outsourced to a third-party diagramming vendor, if necessary).
• Replace built-in report writer with direct integration to Microsoft Word.
• Improve dashboard "Getting Started" guidance to direct modelling activities according to "what" I wish to achieve, e.g., "I wish to generate a Platform Application Map," and all the most appropriate/popular types of diagrams are made available.
• Improve support to intuitively generate hierarchical navigation diagrams.
  

Using Sparx Enterprise Architect allowed my customer to detail and make the company's IT strategy visible and accessible to all. The system provided clear roadmaps for IT development and helped to keep up-to-date documentation of systems and processes.

I like to use this system, it is a handy tool for visual modeling that provides opportunities for analysis, design, and support of models using ArchiMate, UML. 

The system provides powerful tools for obtaining reports and documentation. 

There is a good community of users of this system, providing the opportunity to learn and share knowledge.

I would like the system to more "intellectually" build a scheme, place icons, and connect lines on the schemes.

No issues with stability.

No issues with scalability.

Good.

ARIS Business Architect, ARIS Business Designer. 

Sparx EA is better suited for small and medium-sized companies, cheaper and easier in terms of training. It is better suited to modeling on ArchiMate 3.0 notation.

Easy.

Pricing and licensing are suitable even for small companies.

I recommend connecting to the Sparx EA community.

• Standards development for OMG - IEPPV, EFFRA, SOPES, IEPPS
• Product development - ASMG implementation of the IEF framework
• Client EA activities - for multiple federal and provincial agencies

Simplified our task at maintaining architecture information and traceability with requirements.

Large variety of profiles and frameworks available out-of-the-box without the need for customization, and not locked into one way of doing architecture. Huge advantage as one works the architecture between business and technical communities.

• Document
• Report generation
• More challenging than other tools to maintain documents and document versions for an architecture board review.

Solution architecture and design, however the database management area really was not usable. I could not even send in a DDL to reverse engineer it. Also, adding referential integrity to existing fields from a reverse engineered database resulted in duplication of keys. 

Not really.

Unfortunately, only one of our solution architects was using this in the end, as the others resorted to Vision because it was more user-friendly. I ended up buying an Idera licence for ER/Studio and using that instead.

I struggled with most of the features for this tool, as did the rest of our architecture team.

The database part needs to be more like ERwin or ER/Studio. 

It really did not work for logical modeling. The look is very old-fashioned. You can't make the diagrams easy on the eye, so we ended up drawing them again in Visio anyhow.

Creating diagrams and sets of reusable artifacts using UML, Arhimate and other notations.

Using diagrams and artifacts to generate documentation.

We adopted Sparx EA more than six years ago. Before that, all models were created in MS Visio and were maintained independently without any tractability. That led to insufficient incomplete impact analysis and incomplete solutions. With Sparx EA, models became a maintainable and reusable asset of the corporation. Correct impact analysis became a matter of minutes. As a result the quality of solutions drastically improved. Not mentioning that all employees in any department can now clearly understand business processes with all related applications and infrastructure at any level.

• Great adaptability to modeling needs of all organization departments: Business, Architecture, Software Development, and Systems Support.
• Kind of all-in-one solution (in a good meaning of it), through support for many standard modeling notations used in most of domains of the IT/IS. The list of supported notation grows constantly.
• Effective for Enterprise, Solution, and Software architectures.
• Ability to maintain cross-references for all models in all levels - great tractability.
• Versioning for all elements.
• Very attractive pricing and simple licensing model.
• Good set of the add-ons that grow and improve.

The elements of the modeling sets can have better customization and visual representation. It would be great to have a mobile version.

We did not encounter any issues with stability.

With very large projects, the loading time can become a bit longer, although not to the extent of becoming a great concern.

I would rate the level of technical support as "not bad". But I did not need to use technical support too much.

MS Visio was used for tractability and maintenance, and many other concerns, were the reasons that we switched.

The initial setup was very easy. After that, by following the best practices from the Sparx website, it is easy to organize the whole modeling process with versioning. You have the ability to reuse existing elements/projects and create customized project templates.

In my opinion, there is a great ROI on a product like this.

Pricing and licensing is very attractive, simple, and straightforward.

We evaluated other options such as Rational Software Architect, Visual Paradigm, and Altova UModel.

Plan and organize your elements and models using the best practices from the beginning and create customized project templates. That will benefit you greatly afterwards.