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CA Datacom vs IDERA ER/Studio comparison

 

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
5th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.2
Number of Reviews
39
Ranking in other categories
Enterprise Architecture Management (8th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2026, in the Database Development and Management category, the mindshare of CA Datacom is 1.2%, down from 1.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of IDERA ER/Studio is 3.1%, up from 3.0% 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 Datacom1.2%
Other95.7%
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."
"It does its job very well."
"They are very responsive; they are always ready to meet any questions that we have or any needs that we have, and we get very personal one-on-one support when we need it with just top-notch service."
"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."
"They provide the best support compared to other providers I have used previously."
"It is a solid product."
"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."
"The initial setup is fairly straightforward for a mainframe product."
"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."
"It has a wealth of time-savers and features that are extremely useful."
"We use the solution to create data models which describe our company's data architecture"
"The most valuable features are... those that enable me to represent the database to the development community and the business users."
"Data lineage tracking: It allows us to identify upstream and downstream systems using data."
"Developing new dimensional models; for the data we're hosting, dimensional modeling is more useful."
"One example is the use of the product to make extracts and split databases, and we were selling parts of the company to other regions of other companies, and it made the process more efficient and faster and less costly."
"The interface is really simple to use and it allows me to pick and choose which tables I want to reverse engineer."
 

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."
"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."
"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."
"This version does not properly generate SQL Server computed columns; future versions do this."
"The solution's reporting could be improved because the report writer is terrible."
"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."
"What needs the most improvement are semantic lineage and usability."
"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 did have a big issue when we upgraded to the 2016 version. The Team Server portion never did quite install correctly, and/or the database was corrupted, and we never figured it out."
"Tech support hasn't been as good lately as it was in the past. It is down to average."
"Documentation tends to range from pointless to incomprehensible."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available
"I use the product's trial version."
"The process of licensing could be much simpler, from our experience."
"I feel the product's pricing is a good value."
"As an individual user, the renewal is a little costly."
"The solution’s pricing is high."
"The product is pricey."
"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."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
No data available
Financial Services Firm
14%
Energy/Utilities Company
13%
Construction Company
8%
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: June 2026.
900,747 professionals have used our research since 2012.