

SAP PowerDesigner and erwin Data Modeler are leading competitors in the data modeling tools category. SAP PowerDesigner is often favored for its user-friendly interface and cost-effectiveness, while erwin Data Modeler distinguishes itself with detailed data lineage and robust documentation, making it suitable for complex data environments despite its higher cost and complexity.
Features: SAP PowerDesigner offers custom data model validation, reverse engineering, and meta-model template generation, enabling effective management of large databases with ease. In contrast, erwin Data Modeler is recognized for detailed forward and reverse engineering, data lineage management, and comprehensive visualization, which facilitates handling complex data structures.
Room for Improvement: SAP PowerDesigner could improve repository features, enhance support for cloud technologies, and integrate newer language features. erwin Data Modeler might benefit from an improved user interface, more support for emerging data technologies, and performance optimization for handling large data models.
Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Both SAP PowerDesigner and erwin Data Modeler offer primarily on-premise deployment. SAP PowerDesigner users have mixed experiences with technical support, while erwin Data Modeler users generally find the documentation helpful but note the additional costs and sometimes delayed support.
Pricing and ROI: SAP PowerDesigner is competitively priced and particularly beneficial for large enterprises with a full SAP stack, leading to faster ROI due to lower costs and seamless integration. erwin Data Modeler, though more expensive, offers detailed capabilities that justify its cost for enterprise-level deployments, providing significant operational efficiency benefits.
If three engineers save ten hours each per month using erwin Data Modeler versus manual modeling, that equals three hundred sixty hours saved per year.
It replaces manual charting in Visio with a structured tool, providing significant return on investment.
If the modeling is compromised, then the entire structure will be compromised.
I cannot put a number on it, but if you think about developing software manually or using a tool to generate software and considering the license cost of SAP PowerDesigner, the ROI is pretty positive relatively quick because it's not that expensive.
The quality and speed of their support are excellent; everyone is very helpful, and they can solve problems quickly.
This rating reflects my ability to effectively utilize the tool and get support for licensing issues, installation errors, or corrupted repositories end-to-end.
Quest is committed to keeping the product robust.
It relies heavily on VBScript, which is something that will be end of life in a few years in Windows.
Regarding technical support, after a recent licensing issue caused a temporary halt, we realized the importance of tracking licensing and version updates to avoid future disruptions in service.
Until I get 16.7 and complete the migration, I'm not getting any help from them.
I would rate it probably a nine, making it a leader in data modeling.
erwin Data Modeler had a very good standardization infrastructure and supported a controlled multi-user environment with check-ins and check-outs.
Performance can degrade during larger collaborations and requires tuning for optimal performance.
Currently, there are no scalability limitations in SAP PowerDesigner, allowing us to create numerous data models for various projects.
The scalability of SAP PowerDesigner is very good.
Our main objective is to upgrade to the supported version and be able to do whatever we are doing at the moment.
This lack of an auto-save methodology can be improved so that if a system crash occurs, work can be saved and rework can be avoided.
New versions often introduce enhanced features but may cause model crashes due to memory exhaustion.
Sometimes when I want to open the attribute editor, it stops working and the whole application freezes.
If you use a lot of customizations, especially using VBScript, it becomes less stable.
This may lead to frequent downtimes requiring server maintenance; thus, it is not suitable for highly complex solutions, but moderate complexities can be handled.
The product is reliable.
The previous version of erwin Data Modeler used to crash unaccountably, but this one hasn't ever crashed on me, so it's been a lot more stable than the previous version that we had.
There are many features, and I would expect good documentation detailing each feature, including when and how to use it, to be very useful because data modeling is not very popular in the data area and there aren't many educational videos regarding erwin Data Modeler.
Erwin Data Modeler could improve in areas such as the interface, as there are features like copy and paste, creating duplicates, and the visualization elements and toolbars which feel quite old.
SAP PowerDesigner does not have a cloud option. It's only on-premise.
I would like to see a feature added to SAP PowerDesigner where, upon extracting data from a source, it automatically identifies relationships between tables.
The web portal is unstable and does not work. It freezes up all the time.
For a cloud or SaaS standard edition, it typically runs around two hundred to two hundred ninety-nine US dollars per month.
It is more targeted toward an enterprise level since organizations looking to store business information and relationship values may consider the pricing.
One issue is the cost, as it is a high-priced tool coming from SAP.
One of the key aspects of data governance is defining the data dictionary and clearly identifying which data is accessible by whom and what is not accessible, particularly regarding PII-related data.
The way the data is organized and you have a visual of that organization helps a great deal in terms of trying to remember what you did and trying to retrieve the information.
Migrating DDLs using erwin Data Modeler is easy because I just connect to the database and generate the data model from what is already implemented, making the process straightforward.
The best features of SAP PowerDesigner, from my perspective, are its ability to keep the connectivity between the source database and the new system, data redundancy and availability, and impact analysis.
SAP PowerDesigner doesn't only allow you to model the structure of your database, but you can also model data mappings or data flows or lineage.
What I appreciate best about SAP PowerDesigner is that it is a very detailed and comprehensive tool.
| Product | Mindshare (%) |
|---|---|
| erwin Data Modeler | 8.3% |
| SAP PowerDesigner | 7.4% |
| Other | 84.3% |


| Company Size | Count |
|---|---|
| Small Business | 16 |
| Midsize Enterprise | 3 |
| Large Enterprise | 35 |
| Company Size | Count |
|---|---|
| Small Business | 18 |
| Midsize Enterprise | 7 |
| Large Enterprise | 17 |
Erwin Data Modeler provides an effective approach to visualizing and managing data models. It assists in creating, reversing, and synchronizing data models with ease, supporting logical and physical transitions while enhancing understanding across teams.
Erwin Data Modeler is a comprehensive tool designed for professional database management. It offers capabilities to organize and enforce standards, automating script generation with robust reverse engineering and DDL output. Users can manage complex data environments, capitalize on integration with data intelligence, and maintain large-scale databases smoothly. Despite its strengths, improvements in multi-language support, database integration, and reporting features are needed. Users benefit from extensive support for conceptual, logical, and physical database modeling, enhancing architectural design and data governance for platforms like SQL Server, Oracle, and Teradata.
What are the key features of Erwin Data Modeler?Erwin Data Modeler finds application in industries focused on robust data management, implementing it for enterprise data warehouses, business domain models, and operational systems. It supports architectural design and governance, aligning with business applications demanding precise data representation and visualization.
SAP PowerDesigner is a valuable solution for developing several different types of data models according to business process needs. Data models can be logical, conceptual, and physical, and can also include dimensional and relational models. PowerDesiger has the ability to integrate a designed business process model with the actual database design to ensure that all the data process steps are included in the logical model. PowerDesigner is able to use the physical model to create the actual database, and from there, design various physical iterations from a single logical model.
PowerDesigner can perform excellent reverse-engineering of existing databases to create a model diagram. The solution integrates well with many of today's most recognized database management systems (DBMS). Some of the solution’s featured outputs include custom or standard reports of every object in the design (relationships, field, and tables), design impact analysis, and entity-relationship (ER) designs.
PowerDesigner offers intuitive capabilities such as metadata management, link and sync, and data modeling. Users can instantly view architecture layers and essentials, access the robust metadata repository, and share findings with the user’s entire team.
SAP PowerDesigner Features
SAP PowerDesigner Benefits
Reviews from Real Users
“The most valuable feature of SAP PowerDesigner is the testing of the models, it has the best function. Reverse engineering is very helpful too. I use SAP PowerDesigner for data modeling and documentation. It interacts well with the other tools. Additionally, we use it for all of the business requirements, such as CDM and PDM.” - Saadat T., Emerging Cloud Solution Architect at a tech services company
“It's a great tool for documentation. A new data scientist can easily understand the data just by looking at it. Once you are managing your physical data with a logical data model, by looking at this data model, you can understand what it means, the business meaning of the elements which are maintained by the relational database.” - Michael R., DA
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