erwin Data Modeler Reviews

We use the Workgroup Edition for sharing data models across the organization. The primary reason we're using the Workgroup Edition over the Standard Edition is the centralized repository of models.

Standard Edition requires individuals to determine how to share data models, whether you share them in a local LAN directory, through email, SharePoint, or Livelink. You have to come up with your own versioning scheme and your method for sharing models. With the Workgroup Edition, because it has the centralized repository with version control embedded in it, it standardizes how your organization does versioning and centralizes all the models at the same time.

The solution's ability to compare and synchronize data sources with data models is fantastic. We use it for that on a regular basis to make sure that changes haven't been made to the database outside of the modeling process. I can take existing databases and reverse engineer them and understand their structure within 15 minutes. If I didn't have Data Modeler it would take hours. It increases our productivity and helps in understanding our legacy application.

The organization that I'm currently with has not historically done data modeling as a discipline. We're using the tool to introduce data modeling into the organization because it is an intuitive tool. There are other modeling products on the market that aren't as intuitive, tools that are currently in use at my company. With this tool, we have an easier ramp-up with our new staff because it is more intuitive.

The solution's support for Snowflake affects our organization's data modeling tremendously because we didn't have a decent tool for the Snowflake product. There are a couple of tools on the market, but they are not good modeling tools. The fact that erwin Data Modeler supports Snowflake is a huge benefit to this organization. The existing procedures couldn't be satisfied with the tooling that my company was using. It's a huge plus because it was difficult for teams that are migrating to Snowflake to adhere to the internal company standards of data modeling, because there were no products that offered Snowflake as one of the solutions.

It also reduces development time because you don't have to write DDL manually anymore. You use the data modeling tool to generate the DDL. It reduces development time by about 10 percent. Workgroup's code generation helps to ensure accurate engineering of data sources, which reduces the number of errors during development. If someone is writing DDL by hand and they don't get the syntax right, they have to figure out what's wrong with it to be able to fix it. It helps you build your table structures more quickly so that you can actually begin development of the business logic in your application layer.

The most valuable features of the Workgroup Edition are the

• centralization of the models
• flexibility of the directory structure
• application of the naming standards across all models in the repository.

The centralization of models helps share models across the organization. Instead of having to email someone and say, "Hey, where did you put the model for this?" it's easily found. It also makes it easy to organize models. When you work in a large organization that has more than 1,000 models, you need to be able to organize them in some fashion.

Historically, the Workgroup Edition had a flat structure so you had to name a model in a particular way to be able to find it, when you had thousands of models. With the current version, because you have a flexible directory, you can organize your models any way that your organization feels would work well.

In addition, the visualization side of erwin really helps people to understand the structure of their data. It greatly enhances their ability to create the appropriate modifications to their existing structure, because they can graphically see how their structure is currently laid out. It helps with maintenance on existing applications, and it dramatically helps, when you're doing greenfield, in understanding your data requirements in a graphical format. The graphical aspect helps non-technical people to understand the database design. For the non-technical folk, it is very helpful for understanding the design and whether or not the design is meeting their requirements.

For anyone who's interested in the data design of an application, or a warehouse, the erwin Data Modeling tool is very helpful. That's especially true for people who don't understand the structure of databases. It helps them understand the relationships between tables, and what is contained within a table. It's an understanding that they don't have without this kind of product.

I would like to see the ability to support more NoSQL platforms more quickly. 

In addition, enhancing the graphics to render more quickly would be beneficial for any user.

I've been using erwin Data Modeler since 1992. In my current company, they were already using Data Modeler when I started in December of 2020, but I'm implementing the Workgroup Edition. They didn't have that.

Workgroup is a really stable product. 

The challenges I have found with it, from a stability perspective, are simply because of the sizes of the organizations that I have worked at. The sizes of some of the warehouses we have are quite ridiculous. When you get upwards of 5,000 tables and a million columns in a single model, the tool shows symptoms, primarily, of memory issues, and it becomes slower. To be frank, it's a result of poor design of a legacy database in the first place. It's not a fault with the erwin product, rather it's the fault of the people who designed that database.

In the past, we have had problems with scalability, but the vendor has fixed all of those issues over the last two years. I contacted them directly and they fixed things in the product for all of their clients.

Their tech support is adequate. It's easy to elevate an issue if I run into support personnel who aren't capable of handling it.

The company that I'm with now uses IBM InfoSphere Data Architect. We're switching to erwin because the IBM product is inferior and it is in maintenance mode and will not be supported. It also does not support Snowflake or any non-relational databases, such as Cassandra or Couchbase or Mongo. Workgroup does.

The initial setup of Workgroup is easy. The installation software is very straightforward.

You make the rest of it as difficult as your organization needs it to be. The directory structure that you establish is dependent on what your organization requires. In addition, it offers two different methods of user-authentication and four different profiles to manage the security of who can do what within the centralized repository. It gives you complete flexibility for your data modeling practice to be as open or as closed as your organization desires.

The amount of time the deployment will take will be dependent upon the specifics of an organization's modeling. In a large organization, you can't just install software. You have to go through a process that takes weeks, such as packaging the software for distribution onto desktop. The back end of the Workgroup Edition, which provides you the centralized repository, is an easy implementation. It's the directory structure, and the security that you want as an organization, that drive complexity into the deployment. If I wanted to let every person in the organization modify every model, I could be done in a day. If I need 20 different Active Directory groups and different levels of security, then I have to think through how I want my organization to use the tool, to set up the security appropriately. The tool itself makes it very easy to do that. The hard part is deciding how you want your organization to operate.

We work directly with erwin.

I don't think we'll have any return on investment in the near term. It's more of a long-term investment and a change in the culture of the company. It will take time before it shows any ROI.

The tool is definitely worth its price.

We looked at ER/Studio. We chose erwin because ER/Studio does not support Snowflake or Cassandra or Couchbase. They do support Mongo, but that isn't a database that we use.

You really need to sit down and consider how you want to organize your models, and how you should set up security, based on your organization's needs. The bigger the company, the more complex it can be, so you really need to think that through prior to implementing.

The solution is primarily used for banking data models.

I have worked with erwin Data Modeler for quite some time and familiarity is its most valuable feature. 

The reverse engineering in Oracle Databases needs improvement, as there are issues. 

I have been using erwin Data Modeler for twelve years.

It is a stable solution. I rate the stability an eight out of ten. 

The solution's scalability depends on the device that you use it on. 

The technical support team is good. I rate the support an eight out of ten.

Positive

Previously, I used SAP PowerDesigner.

The initial setup is straightforward. The deployment takes a few minutes when entering the license and installing it. 

It is not a very expensive solution. Only the licensing and maintenance fee needs to be paid. 

I recommend erwin Data Modeller because it is a good data modeling solution in comparison to others available in the market.

I rate the overall solution an eight out of ten.

The easiest way of exposing or sharing the model to all the users at the enterprise level is the feature I found to be valuable in the solution.

They should merge all those products because apart from the Mark Server, they have the Web Portal, which requires a separate installation and license. And it's not easy to maintain, but very easy to use. So you need additional resources such as memory, unlike if they merge those Web Portal and Mark Server, which would be a great solution.

I think they should be more open to or ready to be agnostic to any databases, such as MongoDB. Any database available in the market should be ready in their drivers because I don't think they can be ready. So all the popular databases like Oracle, MySQL, Microsoft, and SQL Server, but I haven't seen any connector in Cosmos DB SQL, so it should be in the big data or cloud solution.

I have been using erwin Data Modeler for a year.

It is not a very stable solution. I rate the stability five out of ten.

It is a scalable solution. Around 20 users are using the solution presently. I rate the scalability an eight out of ten.

The technical support team is fine.

Previously, we used SAP PowerDesigner. One of the primary reasons we switched to Data Modeler is that we need to expose our models so that the user can access them very efficiently and time-bound. If I develop a model and if it's a room, I can easily push that model into a web portal. The users can study and use it from there, unlike in the previous SAP PowerDesigner. You need to export an image or picture file or JPEG or PNG; then you have to share on SharePoint and upload it in Confluence of this. That is a very tedious way of sharing the model. The stability of the solution needs improvement.

The initial setup is straightforward. The solution is deployed through the desktop version available for Data Artifacts. There is also a repository, the data node, and a web portal which is the application or web application for data analysis and other users interested in starting the model. I did all the deployment.

The pricing of the solution is cheap. I rate the pricing a five out of ten.

SAP solution is more stable compared to Data Modeler and fits our requirements as an enterprise team.

I rate the overall solution a seven out of ten.

Our primary use is for doing database designs on just about any platform. The main users are dedicated data architects, while we also have development team staff using the tools to review models. Additionally, our database admins access the solution for implementing the Data Definition Language (DDL).

The solution is excellent in providing a visual representation of a database and can generate DDL for implementing changes. We use DDL for logical purposes to review with business people, ensuring they have the required fields for processing. We also use it as a data dictionary for the physical data model to understand all the purposes of the terms. This helps us map the logical and physical terms with the business definition to understand our data.

Data Modeler is straightforward to use and fulfills all our requirements. 

Although Quest Software has made tremendous strides in recent years, they need to evolve more in the big data arena; erwin Data Modeler could use a little more work when it comes to big database designs.

We've been using the solution since the 90s. 

The product is very stable. 

The platform is highly scalable; we use it for our entire enterprise data architecture. 

The tech support is pretty good, but there's always room for improvement, so I rate them eight out of ten.

Positive

Our initial setup was over 20 years ago, but I know it to be almost effortless; it's a basic software installation that takes about five minutes.

Regarding maintenance, there are occasionally new versions and releases, and we have dedicated data architect teams that coordinate so every team upgrades simultaneously.

We've continued to use the product for many years and compared it with others on the market. The pricing is reasonable considering what the solution offers and what we pay. There are cheaper tools, but they may not be as robust and easy to use, so it's worth the money.

I rate the solution nine out of ten.

My advice to those considering the solution is to use dedicated data architects; when you give this type of product to development teams, there can be issues around creating and following standards, which is essential for data model integration. You don't want different teams defining the same types of columns with varying lengths, like dollar amounts. If the entire company agrees that the dollar amount field is 18 digits long and two digits to the right of the decimal place, then you're consistent. If different teams disagree, data can't be transferred from one database to another without truncation. Having a centralized team that enforces standards is critical.

I am using it for database design. I am using it to architect and generate one database platform from another. It involves reverse engineering and SQL generation.

Its biggest benefit is the conversion from one database platform to another database platform and reporting.

It provides flexibility with the code. You can change the code as you want. Basically, you can change SQL based on what's best for your project.

There are some bugs here and there. The default code that comes with the customizable packages is a bit buggy on some platforms such as PostgreSQL. erwin has its own language in the backend, and the packages that come for PostgreSQL are a bit buggy. They should fix them.

It would be nice to have it on the Linux platform, not just Windows. If they can support Linux, there would be a huge market for it. 

Currently, we can import only 80% of features from other platforms. We would like to be able to get the remaining features. These import tools or plugins are not from erwin. They are from different companies. Ideally, erwin should take them over and make some of those better.

I have been using this solution for about a year and a half.

It is pretty stable.

It is very scalable. This is something very nice about it.

We have three users who use this solution. They are from the database administration team. For its administration, we have the database administration team lead.

It is used for database architecture and design. We use it only when we have to make some changes. We then produce documentation of the database design changes. As long as there are changes to be made, it is in use. Otherwise, it is not in use.

Their technical support is very good.

We used System Architect from UNICOM, which was outdated. 

It was very straightforward. The deployment took three days, which included evaluating our upgrades. Installing and configuring erwin took only 10 minutes.

We did it on our own.

We have not got a whole lot of ROI. We use it restrictively for database administration. I know it can be used for other plans of architects, but in our case, it is not fully used.

We didn't go for a subscription. It was a one-time fee. I don't understand who does subscriptions on such solutions. PowerDesigner comes with yearly subscriptions, and I can't understand how that is possible. Who in the world keeps on changing the database engine? Once you have such an application, you cannot just upgrade it like your phone. So, I cannot understand how they're pushing this.

erwin has this option where you pay a one-time fee and you have the license for six years, which makes sense because I don't upgrade my database engine every other year. I have an application that depends on it. This is something weird about PowerDesigner. 

There are no additional costs beyond the standard licensing fee.

We also evaluated PowerDesigner. It has an excessively high price. It is ridiculous. It was not that the company could not afford it, but the price was just unnecessary.

It is a very good product if you want to import existing designs. It is a tremendously flexible product for reverse engineering and database generation.

I would rate it an eight out of 10. The main reason is that it has lots of features. It is extremely flexible, but some of the areas need a bit more debugging, testing, and fixing.

We usually use it to design new databases as well as reverse engineer some databases from third-party products, e.g., ERPs or monetary software.

The most valuable features are the ability to reverse engineer and do model comparison. With the reverse engineering, I can understand the databases from third-party products. With the model comparison, I can track the differences between two versions of the same database.

Because I can graphically see the Modeler database, that is very helpful for my job as it helps me understand the database. It is very different from SQL and DML scripts, which are very hard to understand with just sentences. When we have a graphic, that is very helpful. We can save time understanding that database.

I like the synchronization ability a lot because it can tell me to apply some level of governance to my models. I can be sure that the model in my documentation or development environment matches with the database that is working in our production environment. It is accurate. Though, it is not always fast when we have dozens of tables, but it works. I wait about an hour in order to have a big database synchronized.

The solution’s code generation ensures accurate engineering of data sources. It avoids rework.

I would like to have more data sources from other, different vendors. In recent years, the vendor has reduced the number of data sources, and I would like to have more data sources for every brand. For example, with Oracle, I would like to have compatibility for many versions, including old ones, not just the most recent. 

The technical support could be better. They could give faster solutions.

I have been using this solution since 1995.

It is stable.

Only when the database is too big, then we could have some trouble. We are talking about maybe 12,000 tables, then it starts to have some problems.

With erwin, we just need to add memory to the computer in order to work with bigger databases. However, it would be good to have erwin for other platforms, e.g., Linux and Macintosh, not just Windows. 

The technical support is good. They are highly skilled. 

Before erwin, I was manually using Notebook for my databases. Before erwin, I was designing databases and analyzing them manually all the time.

We chose erwin because it was the only solution which could help us design a database on the computer.

It saves a lot of development time. I think we are saving from two weeks to one month annually. It depends on the size and complexity of the database.

The solution’s automation of reusable design rules and standards is good compared to basic drawing tools. It saves time and keeps us from errors, which are very costly in the database. Therefore, we can get back our money very quickly.

The accuracy and speed of the solution in transforming complex designs into well-aligned data sources makes the cost of the tool worth it.

erwin is expensive compared to other solutions. We are paying almost $6,000 per seat a month.

I have used different solutions along the way, but then I moved back to erwin. Besides erwin, I have tried IDERA Embarcadero, but I think erwin is more usable and has helped me to do my job better.

I rate this solution as nine out of 10.

In one of the companies, we used it as an information tool. We created a logical model so that the business would know what was in the offices down to the warehouse. The current use case is also the same. We have some places for information, so we can do a logical data model for them, but, usually, it would go towards building an actual database, which also involves reverse engineering of an existing one because people don't know what's in there.

It is currently on-prem, but we still have a separate server.

We want to bring different erwin components together and tell a business user story. So, having all of it on one platform to be able to tell one story makes it not as fragmented as components have been in the past. 

In my previous company, when we had 1,000 tables, 6,000 columns, and 14 subject areas, trying to explain to people in the organization was difficult. Without the tool, it would have been impossible. With the tool, it was a lot easier because you could show a steward how this is his or her domain. For each steward, you could say, "Well, this is your domain over here." Once they had that, they could understand what you were talking about. So, it improved communication. We had a point where two stewards were looking at the models, and one of them said, "I think that one that you've got over there is actually mine." The other one said, "I think you're right." So, we actually moved an entity from one subject area to another because now they had the ability to see what was in their subject area. They could go and see what wasn't theirs and should be someone else's. If we didn't have the tool, we wouldn't have that visibility and wouldn't have been able to recognize that sort of situation. 

Its ability to generate database code from a model for a wide array of data sources cuts development time. You don't have to re-key things. You put in the information at one spot, and it flows out from there. There are so many parameters you can put on the physical side. You can put in your indexes, and you can put in expected size changes. You can store all sorts of information within the model itself. It is a really good repository of all that sort of information, and then you just push a button, and it generates the other end. It works really well. In terms of time-saving, if you had to write it all out by hand, it would take weeks. It would probably take three or four times longer without the tool.

It certainly improves accuracy for the generation of target databases because you're only putting information in one spot. You don't have to retype it. For example, I saw the word conceptual model misspelled today. So, if you have to re-key something, no matter how careful you are, you're going to misspell things, which would cause problems down the track, whereas if you make a mistake in DM, there is only one place you have to go and fix it, and then, you would regenerate the downstream stuff. This means that you don't have to touch anything physical. You generate it, and then you can use it.

Being able to point it to a database and then pull the metadata is a valuable feature. Another valuable feature is being able to rearrange the model so that we can display it to users. We are able to divide the information into subject areas, and we can divide the data landscape into smaller chunks, which makes it easier to understand. If you had 14 subject areas, 1,000 entities, and 6,000 columns, you can't quite understand it all at once. So, being able to have the same underlying model but only display portions of it at a time is extremely useful.

I am currently trying to compare and synchronize data sources with data models, and it is pretty good. It shows you all the differences between the two systems. After that, it is a matter of what you want to do with them. It is certainly helpful for bringing models in and being able to compare. At the moment, I'm comparing something that's in a database with something that was in the DDL statement. So, these are two different sets of sources, and I can bring different sources together and compare them in the one, which is really helpful.

I still use Visio for conceptual modeling, and that's mainly because it is easier to change things, and you can relax some of the rules. DM's eventual target is a database, which means you actually have to dot all the Is and cross all the Ts, but in a conceptual model, you don't often know what you're working with. So, that's probably a constraint with erwin.

They have made it a lot easier, and they've done a lot, but there is probably still room for improvement in terms of the ease of presentation back to the business. I'm comparing it with something like Visio where you can change colors on a box, change the text color and that sort of stuff, and change the lines. Such things are a whole lot easier in Visio, but once you get a theme organized in erwin, you can apply that theme to all of the objects. So, it becomes easier, but you do have to set up that theme. I think they've got three to four initial themes. There is a default theme, and then there are two or three others that you can pick from. So, having more color themes would help. In Visio, you have a series of themes where someone who knows about color has actually matched the colors to each other. So, if you use the colors in the theme, they will complement each other. So, erwin should provide a couple more themes.

They could perhaps think of having an entry-level product that is priced a bit lower. For extra features, the users can pay more.

I have been using it at least since 2003. I have used it at multiple organizations.

It has always been really stable in the different organizations that I've used it in. It has always been a pretty good product.

It works fine with the number of people who have been using the product. We're talking about 10 to 12 people, not thousands of people. I haven't ever been in an organization where thousands of people even needed to get to the product. Probably the biggest drawback in scalability is the cost per seat rather than the actual product. The product works fine.

Our current organization has probably about 5 to 10 people using it. We're a consultancy, so we're using it in various roles. So, a lot of it is to do with understanding. As consultants, we try to understand what a client has in the organization and what sort of data they have to make sure there is actually data in the system that can answer their business questions. So, that's the sort of thing we use it for. We can turn around and give them designs. We can show what it is, and then we can turn around and make it what it would be. It is used by analysts and developers. They are not developing software. They are probably developing the database, but then, people would develop software.

I've used it on all the projects I've been on so far. I've been with this company for a short time, and it has come into play for pretty much all of the projects that I've been on. We want to use it more extensively. We want to use the erwin suite. We've got the modeler, but we also want to use their BI tool. We would like to evolve and come up with a story that links all of them together.

We have only just got the BI suite installed. We're starting to play around with it and see what we can do with it. We're doing some training on it at the moment. In a previous company also, somebody from erwin came to show it to us, and it was reasonably new at that point. That was last year. It is a reasonably new product. So, getting them to talk to each other has also been fairly new. erwin has only done it in the last couple of years. 

I haven't had dealings with them, but the dealings I've had with erwin as a company have always been really good. So, I would rate them a nine or 10 out of 10.

I use Visio on the conceptual side. We've got Informatica, and I think it has got a modeling component in there. We try to get a range of products because we're doing consulting in various organizations, and they have got various tools. Usually, it depends on what a client has already installed. Sometimes, it also depends on their budget. Something like Informatica is usually at the top right end corner of the Gartner Quadrant, but it could also be overkill for smaller organizations because the benefit may not be there. So, a lot of time, it is horses for courses. You have to sort of tailor any solution to meet a client's needs.

I haven't ever really installed erwin. One of the other guys has done that. Most of the places had it installed already. Usually, the complexity depends on how the organization does its software deployment. So, you have to go and request the software and then somebody has to give you the package. Once you get the package, it is pretty straightforward. It is usually less of a problem on erwin's side and more of an issue with how an organization deploys any erwin software, but once you deploy it, it works fine.

Some places that I've worked with were very strict about doing testing on COTS products to make sure that there are no viruses on it and also to make sure that it plays nicely with the rest of the system. So, those sorts of organizations may take longer in terms of testing. You put it on a test machine first and make sure it is not going to kill anything. They might have to repackage some stuff before they put it out to the network. To deploy a vanilla thing, I would think that it would only take a couple of hours.

In terms of maintenance, at the moment, I think we've got one person. The main thing is deploying new versions. You've got a server stood up, and you have to put the software out there. I don't know if there is anything else beyond that.

We haven't done an ROI for the current version. When you look at the total cost of creating or understanding what you've currently got through reverse engineering, and you look at the total cost of creating new products and new databases and maintaining them over time, and then you put that into the return on investment model, it is well worth it.

The accuracy and speed of the solution in transforming complex designs into well-aligned data sources make the cost of the tool worth it. If you didn't have the tool and a single developer or a single modeler was trying to do the same thing, the speed would be three or four times slower. If you multiply that by the cost of that person and then you also consider the cost of the other people who are waiting for that person to create a database design, it multiplies out. So, it is well worth it.

It has increased in price a fair amount over the years. It has always been expensive because it is a comprehensive product, and presumably, they have to do a tremendous amount of testing to make sure that everything works. It has always been dear because usually, a very specific target audience of data architects has the need for modelers, and not everyone in the organization would need to get a copy of it. Only people who are actually working in the database space need it. So, it has always been a very specialized piece of software, and it has been priced accordingly.

I don't specifically know what we're paying now. About three years ago, in another organization, I have this memory of 6,000 AUD a seat or something like that, but I am not sure. In the mid-2000s, it was something like 1,200 AUD a seat. I get the impression that there was a price jump when it was spun off from CA as a separate company, which is understandable, but it could sometimes be a barrier in some organizations picking it up.

I haven't talked to erwin people yet, but I'm going to suggest to them that they could perhaps think of having an entry-level product that is priced a bit lower, and then, you can buy the extra suite. That's what Microsoft does. They package a few things so that you have something, but if you want this extra stuff that has enterprise features, such as they talk to each other and have great bits and pieces, you have to pay more. I don't think there are any additional costs. It is per product, and there are different license levels. 

Oracle Data Modeler, which is free, is one of the competitors that erwin has. You can't argue with the price point on that one, but erwin is much more comprehensive and easier to use. It is easier to display information and models to business people than something like Oracle Data Modeler, which does the job, but erwin does it a lot better. So, my advice would be that if you can afford it, get it.

Its visual data models have certainly improved over time in terms of overcoming data source complexity and enabling understanding and collaboration around maintenance and usage. It was originally designed as a tool to build databases with, and it retains a lot of that. It still looks like that in a lot of cases, but it has also been made more business-friendly with a sort of new front end. So, it used to be all or nothing where when you wanted to show somebody just the entity names or just the entity descriptions, you had to switch all of the entities on your diagram just to show names. Now, you can show some of them. You can shrink down some of them, and you can keep some of them expanded. So, it has become a more useful information-sharing tool over time. It is extremely helpful.

In my previous company, it was the enterprise data model, and you could paper a room with it if you printed the information out. To present that information to people, we had to chunk it down into subject areas. We had to present smaller amounts of information. Because it was linked to the underlying system, we could reuse the information that we had in a model in other models. The biggest lesson was to chunk the information down and present it in a digestible form rather than trying to show the entire thing because otherwise, people would run away screaming.

One of the places didn't have a modeling tool in it, and they were trying to do the documentation using Confluence. It was just a nightmare trying to keep it maintained with different developers using different tables and then needing to throw something into one and adding something into another one. It was just a nightmare. If they had one tool where they could put it all in one place, it would have been so much easier than the mess they had.

I would rate erwin Data Modeler a nine out of 10.

Our company is the solution's only partner and reseller in China. We use the solution to provide data lineage to our customers' production environments. Most of our customers are in the mid-sized range. 

The data lineage feature is very valuable. 

There is a lack of local support in the China region. 

The solution needs to be available in the Chinese language. 

I have been using the solution for 15 years. 

On occasion, we experience some issues with performance so the stability is rated a seven out of ten. 

The solution is scalable.

Local support is lacking in the China region. We try to seek support but also have to do our own research to resolve technical issues. 

The setup is easy and there are only a few steps. You just download the package and install it in the customer's environment. 

We implement the solution for customers and deployments take several days. We handle everything so the customer can just start using the solution. One person can handle setup and deployment. 

There are two license options and the pricing is reasonable.  

The solution is the best option in the market. I rate it a seven out of ten. 

I was part of a standards organization and we built a data model that is a standard data model for use in retail. That data model is now been released in version 7.3 and it is implemented all over the world. We don't implement the model, we've built the logical model and then the companies build their own physical model from there. 

erwin is a retail data model, which means that it handles the operational side of retail, which means there are somewhere around 8,000 attributes in it. It has got around 10 groupings of things. We have a grouping on transactions and there are all kinds of transactions that can occur in retail. The whole customer life cycle is covered in the inventory, items, and all that. The use case is for retail operations. It's massive. There are hundreds of use cases in this.

We don't implement, we simply tell other people how to do it. It's a beautiful model for the new microservices world, so we can help people understand how to fit this into their world. In terms of us actually doing something and implementing it and all that, that's really not in scope for what we do.

erwin is easy. In the microservices world, having a unified retail model like this one that is a standard and allows two companies to inter-operate easily in the past. In fact, the whole reason the model was created was in 1993, was because about half a dozen major retail CIOs got together and said, "We've got to have a standard model because every time we buy a new point of sale system, we need to re-architect our entire enterprise." They started building this model back in 1993, and the beauty of it is it does precisely what they say. A retailer can now integrate two vendor's systems easily, as long as they all follow the same model. It reduces their cost of integration dramatically, as well as being quite a powerful model in and of itself.

It reduces monthly savings by hundreds of thousands of dollars. Think about a company like Costco and all of the points of sale systems in Costco, all of the systems, and the applications, but if all the applications in Costco all had their own data model, trying to integrate those, upgrade them and manage their different versions of the same model throughout the store, is an absolute nightmare. It's phenomenally expensive. This helps reduce that cost significantly. I'm talking on the orders of hundreds of thousands of dollars.

erwin is pretty easy. I've been using it for so long it's like second nature. 

The visual data models are pretty easy for helping to overcome data source complexity and enabling understanding and collaboration around maintenance and usage. It's easy to add, change, and update things. We get feedback from retailers. For example, somebody wants to update something in the item area, they want to use a new item identifier and it's just a matter of going in and adding it to the numerations for that. Or somebody might come in and say, "We're using a little bit of a different pricing model so we need to add this information into the pricing area." Or people will say "We need to add Bitcoin," so we can go in and add Bitcoin and the attributes you need to support it and do it very easily. At this point, we're not adding new capabilities, we're simply expanding existing ones.

The navigation is a little bit of a challenge. It's painful. For example, if you've got a view open and you want to try to move from side to side, the standard today is being able to drag and drop left and right. You can't really do that in the model. Moving around the model is painful because it doesn't follow the Windows model today.

Otherwise, it's got everything I need and it's not hard to use for me.

The stability is great. We don't have any problems. 

I actually did use their support, I had some issues getting it installed and it had to do with that they've given a copy of the Data Modeler for me to support the standard data model, and getting that approved and authorized and all that was a bit of a challenge. I went through the help desk and they got it done pretty easy for me. I had a unique problem.

Positive

I had used D-Base. This was a long time ago, but I used D-Base to build a model for the oil industry. That was a long time ago. It was a 1980s vintage so there is no comparison.

The initial setup is straightforward. You can install it without a lot of hassle.

They gave us a copy because of supporting a standards data model, so pricing and all that is really not something I can compare. I think it's a bit expensive, but it supports and does what we want.

At one point we had a data modeler who wanted to switch to Embarcadero, and it turned out that that was a huge mess so we dropped it. It didn't last very long, but it was a data modeler who came in and wanted to do it in Embarcadero. I think she had an agreement with them and got a bonus for trying to get it converted or approved to convert but it was such a huge mess we didn't do it.

The Embarcadero model is huge. It's got 8,000 attributes in it. Being able to go through and validate that every one of those 8,000 attributes properly converted over to the correct place in Embarcadero was such a massive job. We didn't mess with it. It's not just the attributes, but it's the relationships and table names. It was a huge job so we didn't do it. I suspect if we had gone to Embarcadero, it would have been just fine, but it was just too big of a job.

erwin DM is good. It does the job and it's been around a long time, so I think it would be a good one to use. I don't have any problems with it.

I would rate erwin DM a nine out of ten. Nothing is perfect. I don't have any real issues with it. It does everything we need it to do. It's really good.

We used this solution for three to five projects that we had.

They have a lot of features and the most up-to-date technology integration, which I haven't seen in other products.

In terms of features, I believe they were doing very well in the latest technologies as well.

There are too many features. People find it extremely difficult to navigate. It's a great product, but there are too many features and no one knows exactly where things are. For example, the documentation is not always straightforward, which is why I use another competitor's product, which is simpler and easier to use. It has more features than the product I previously used.

This is a very complex product.

They have a lot of features, and that may be the reason why I'm not familiar with them and has made it more complicated for me. 

In comparison to other products I've used, such as ER studio, which is a competitor to erwin. It is simple and easy to code as well as other functions. Even the coding has become much simpler. I can see that this is a little more complicated. I'm not certain. Right now, I can explicitly state that no features are required because I still need to explore some areas. Maybe the reporting area will be interesting if it is more dynamic.

I have been working with erwin Data Modeler (DM) for approximately four years.

We are using version 9 or 9.1.

Pricing is very high compared to any other product.

I would rate erwin Data Modeler (DM) a nine out of ten.