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CA Datacom vs IDERA ER/Studio comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 23, 2025

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

CA Datacom
Ranking in Database Development and Management
25th
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
8.6
Number of Reviews
7
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
IDERA ER/Studio
Ranking in Database Development and Management
7th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.2
Number of Reviews
39
Ranking in other categories
Enterprise Architecture Management (10th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of September 2026, in the Database Development and Management category, the mindshare of CA Datacom is 1.3%, down from 1.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of IDERA ER/Studio is 3.1%, up from 2.9% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Database Development and Management Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
IDERA ER/Studio3.1%
CA Datacom1.3%
Other95.6%
Database Development and Management
 

Featured Reviews

it_user489183 - PeerSpot reviewer
IT Admin at a logistics company with 10,001+ employees
Scalability and the online maintainability of definitions are definite advantages for us
We've had it for so long, so it's status quo. But we've added all sorts of functionality to our applications and there are no issues with databases. Anything developers request, we're able to accomplish. Also, we deal a lot with government regulation - and not to talk about what the company does - but anything that they require of us, because we transmit data back and forth with them, we're able to do that with no problems. And there have been a lot of changes over the past five years that our government dictated regarding what we actually end up doing. So, we're able to be extremely flexible with that.
reviewer2796111 - PeerSpot reviewer
Data Architect at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees
Improved data modeling has reduced system footprint and strengthened finance workflows
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.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"This product is very stable, compared to a lot of other DBMSs that run in our shop."
"Scalability is definitely one thing. The size of the database can grow without any issues. We've got one database table that's got over a billion rows in it; quite a bit of data, and it handles access like a champ."
"It definitely ​cuts down on our support costs. I do not get woken up in the middle of the night very often for a problem with Datacom."
"It does its job very well."
"The initial setup is fairly straightforward for a mainframe product."
"The technical support staff with whom I have dealt are truly top notch; they understand whatever issue or question we might have and are able to supply quick and valid answers much of the time, or they fully engage in developing solutions when that is required."
"It has cut down on our support, especially after hours, and it is a solid product that just works most of the time."
"Nowadays, CA is doing a lot of improving as far as online maintainability of definitions, which is a huge improvement over the past. I'm able to do a lot of changes without any outage."
"Within a week of installation I had reverse engineered several existing databases into physical data models with basic data dictionaries and published them on the company wiki."
"With both onshore and offshore development teams working 18x5 days, it is an easy way to control check-in's while also maintaining schema views."
"We can track changes to our data models and tie those changes back to specific tasks or efforts that we identify."
"It's easy to model and has a user-friendly interface. I like the team portal because, once we upload, the entire team can see the model."
"This has helped the new application development team in cross-verifying, and understanding, the current setup, proposing and architecting new solutions for the organisation."
"I set up this tool and found it to be very simple."
"It's much easier to develop the database structure and change it on the fly, rather than doing it manually in SQL Server itself, which saves time."
"Developing new dimensional models; for the data we're hosting, dimensional modeling is more useful."
 

Cons

"I had trouble with an upgrade once but, when I have trouble with the upgrade there's always someone there to support me and get me through it really quickly."
"There are still some things - and I know they are working on some of them - but for the "no-outage maintainability" of things, they are making improvements as we speak, but there is definitely still room for more of that."
"Something that we would like to see is for them to develop integration with open distribution systems."
"The only minor issue that we have had with Datacom is in the installation guide: Some of the sizings for the databases have not really worked out for us, so we had to go in and resize them."
"There are a lot of features that come out with each upgrade, but our application that runs on it has been around for a long time; they sort of decommissioned this application."
"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. It works fine. 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."
"Sometimes our version is a little unstable. But I think this problem occurs because our version is old."
"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."
"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"
"The solution could be sped up, as it is a little slow (e.g., when it's doing its database compare)."
"The print facility is a little lacking."
"I would like to see better documentation/help for the Data Architect tool. Creation of tutorials would be nice, as there are some features which are not as clearly defined as they should be."
"I assess the benefits of IDERA ER_Studio's metadata management for my organization as not as good as Erwin's."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available
"Pricing is on point, but do your due diligence - not every developer needs the tool."
"It is priced fairly. It's around the same as erwin and other competitors' costs."
"At my previous company using ER/Studio, a database compare took four hours before using the product and 15 minutes after using the product."
"The process of licensing could be much simpler, from our experience."
"The price of this product is okay."
"The setup cost may have been around $1500 to $2000."
"Pricing is expensive and on the higher-end."
"As an individual user, the renewal is a little costly."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
No data available
Financial Services Firm
13%
Energy/Utilities Company
13%
Outsourcing Company
11%
Comms Service Provider
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Large Enterprise7
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business4
Midsize Enterprise12
Large Enterprise25
 

Questions from the Community

Ask a question
Earn 20 points
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for IDERA ER Studio?
In terms of pricing, ER/Studio is slightly more expensive compared to Erwin, by about five to ten percent.
What is your primary use case for IDERA ER Studio?
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.
What advice do you have for others considering IDERA ER Studio?
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 wha...
 

Also Known As

DATACOM
IDERA ER Studio, ER/Studio, ER/Studio Enterprise Team Edition
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Blue Hill Data Services Inc.
Newmont Mining, Entrust, Accolade, TalkTalk, Catalina, Protective Life, NTT Data, dir systèmes, Microsoft; American Express, Astellas Pharma, AstraZeneca, Coriant, Fedex, GlaxoSmithKline, PepsiCo, Prudential, Wells Fargo
Find out what your peers are saying about CA Datacom vs. IDERA ER/Studio and other solutions. Updated: September 2026.
913,683 professionals have used our research since 2012.