erwin Evolve by Quest Reviews

We were trying to evaluate and compare it with other architecture tools. 

One of my colleagues, a servicing data architect, was trying to create a use case for one of his more recent projects, where he services an auto loan. I was trying to create a process around when some of the dealers sell an automobile, procure an automobile, and finance the automobile, then sell the automobile and get their money.

If we could have gotten it to work, I think it would have really been useful. The software architects felt that what they did already linked to it because it had the data modeling portion. When they did their technical specs, they used Evolve to drive out their technical specs. They would give us their overall technology/technical specifications to then model the data, but we were very frustrated because of the way the data was presented. 

At a detailed level, the software architects would say how the data element should look, what characters it should have along with the naming convention, and how long it should be. We would definitely challenge them on that because we felt that this was our job to do. In some cases, they would throw everything in one table, and we would say, "No, that's not the way we're going to do this because we were doing things in third normal form for our operational databases." 

We reserve the right to change the design, so a lot of the software architects would have to say, "These are just for illustration only. The final data design will be done by the data architect," since that document was the one that the QA testers would use. There was always this problem with them having to update their spec when we made changes. We thought with erwin Evolve we could get something that was more robust from a data point of view.

I really liked that it mapped out processes and was able to attach the data model to the appropriate process. You could map out the process, then when you got down to a specific couple of data elements, you could attach the table in the database that supported that process. You could connect it with erwin Data Modeler for that.

The integration capability with erwin Data Modeler was easy and great.

As we were trying to evaluate erwin Evolve, it was so rich in functionality that we'd get lost in the details. We didn't know where to start. After, we did get started, then we would break away and take on our daily activities. However, when we went back to go look at the solution, we couldn't remember, "How did I get here? What did I do?" Unfortunately, because it took us so long and we were having so much trouble, we couldn't do a complete evaluation to make it into our budget cycle.

It could have had a more streamlined navigation. It seemed that when you went to the explorer panel, there were just so many different ways of doing the work that I could not remember, "How did I do this? How did I get to that point in that model to get back to it?" If I wanted to build a new one, where do I start? It just seemed like there was such a smorgasbord of ways of doing it that it was just overwhelming.

If there is a change to the data model, then it's not automatically reflected in erwin Evolve. You have to go back and reattach it. That could be an issue in a database which has frequent changes. If erwin could find a way to simplify the navigation of getting into the meat of what you want to do, that would help a lot.

We use erwin Data Modeler most of the time. You could have a combo right there, where you see your process and the data right there. I thought that was pretty cool, but navigating to get to that point is what I found too cumbersome.

The integration capability is limited in that if you subsequently make a change in erwin Data Modeler to a table or data element, then it's not automatically reflected in erwin Evolve. This means that you would have to put in a task for erwin Data Modeler that every time they updated the data model to see if it is attached to erwin Evolve. It looked like a manual check to see, "Do I have to reattach that data model to that process because I've made a change?"

They could make it simpler for people to get into the tool and learn the tool, because it just seemed like the learning curve would be very steep.

My previous company, GM Financial, reviewed it last year for potential use. The evaluation was around late Summer, lasting over a month.

I found it to be stable.

I didn't see a problem with it being scalable.

We were a team of about three consistently using it at a time. If we could have gotten it deployed, we were a department of maybe 20 to 30 data architects. Of that, probably our operational architects would have used it first, and that would have been about eight or 10 people. Then, we would have roll it out to the others because we were organized into operational architects, data warehouse architects, and data vault architects. We saw that the operations folks probably would have been the first in line to work with it.

The technical support was always very responsive. It was just the tool itself that we just found too difficult to work with for our use.

The young lady who was our pre-sales consultant was very good. She would help us and answer all our questions. We had the sales executive, then there was also a woman who had the more technical hands-on. We asked her, "Could you please... " and then she made some adjustments for us to sort of make it easier, but we still were awfully slow at being able to get it to work. 

Our software architects had a different tool that they were using. We were hoping to show that Evolve was more robust and see if we couldn't encourage them to use our tool rather than theirs.

The initial setup was not a big deal, I don't remember it being terribly painful. They sent us links which we accessed, then we were in the tool. It was pretty simple.

One of the guys who was working with me, because I was sort of leading the effort with three of us trying to test it, already had a pretty significant library of Excel and Visio diagrams. He said, "I'm not seeing that this is buying me any advantage, because I already have this using Visio, etc." Of course, we kept saying, "Well, we still want to...," but he couldn't see the value of spending the money and extra time trying to test this solution, especially since it was so hard to work with it.

We didn't work on it constantly, because we have our typical job duties. We would go in and out, at least that's what I did. My colleague spent more time with it than I did. Then, one of the guys just got too busy with his project work and didn't do anything at all, which was a little frustrating to me. I went into it sporadically, a couple times a week, to try and spend an hour or two. My manager did the same thing. She tried, when I explained to her, "Here's what I'm coming up against. I just don't know how to get around this."

We set up several calls with the folks at erwin where she would demonstrate how we do it. They created a couple of templates for us to get started so we could just go in and try it. However, we felt like this solution would take a lot of setting up and help from erwin before we could really make use of it.

We had a template in which we looked at the different architecture tools. We had some criteria that we said we wanted from a data architecture point of view, and this was the first tool that we had a chance to get our hands on other than the one that our software solutions architects were already using.

For what it says it can do, it does a good job, but using it is too difficult. When the young lady demonstrated it, we thought, "Oh, this is great." Then, when we went to go use it, and thought, "Oh, my God, it was just too difficult."

Biggest lesson learnt: The ability to really do a function framework and integrate the data associated with the function.

I would rate it as a four out of 10. If you're going to break it out by its functionality, I would give it a seven or eight, but then I would put the ease of use very low. We didn't move forward with it. We couldn't demonstrate it to our senior leadership to say, "Look what this tool can do." We never got good enough at it.

1. Reverse Engineering and Complete Compare – to document database design and test for changes over time across many different platforms (including Big Data platforms and cloud like SQL Azure)
2. Workgroup Repository collection of data models allows research across models without worry about platform incompatibilities and provides easy KPIs about corporate data assets
3. User Defined Properties – Command line links: allows flexibility to link different aspects of the data model to other tools to build better communication tools
4. Model templates (that are able to stay linked with the model) with filterable update capabilities
5. Ability to add images to the model – to help make them communicate better
6. ERwin Portal Links – allows easy 'Find' for information pages about the published ERwin Data Model
7. ERwin Portal scheduled model harvest – allows for a ‘hands-off’ maintenance capability for Administrator.

1. We are providing EU support with our custom development product - so I can now provide both a Logical unified view of the design as well as the more segmented Physical view as the databases are deployed to multiple servers for PII separation, failover Up-time, and performance.
2. Having the data element library itself available for all departments and teams, helps build promote understanding of shared corporate data assets
3. The Portal gives both the Development and Business teams common grounds for communication

1. Support post Relational modeling styles – this might be solved for at a simple level with the ability to design and save ‘template’ entities with a pre-designed generic attribute set, including characteristics like PK, datatypes, nullability. Could be a grey’ed out menu option that is add on functionality. All these styles have both a logical and physical aspect. Ensembles might be solved with Subject areas. Seems that they are gaining use and showing up in conferences.

   1. Data Vault Modeling

   2. Ensemble Modeling

   3. Anchor Modeling

2. Add some ability to do conditional Visualization on the models and in reports (some ideas) – maybe as a specialized Theme or Diagram or Display

   1. Automatic entity colorization for rev eng volumetrics – Red large, Yellow Mid, Green small tables. Either custom banding or simple math by ERwin.

   2. Managed conditional display If … ‘pick a characteristic’ = ‘x’ then … like (If Schema Owner = ‘API’ then Theme = ‘API’)

   3. KPIs on Workgroup Repository more graphic – rather than just data reports. Counts of models, latest updates, license use, Portal use, Harvest errors. etc

3. Assist model management with Lineage mapping impact notification when source models available for impact assessment in Workgroup.

   1. Either a notification on opening a model ‘Source model used in lineage mapping has changed – Would you like to see the changes – (then open Complete compare to assist importing changes)

   2. Ability to flag for cascade updates from Source to Target models – like we can do with Erwin template models (again with notification – ‘Source model used in lineage mapping has changes – would you like to apply the changes?’

4. On upgrade– if the older models in the Workgroup Repository need to be upgraded, allow for a cascade update to newest version through the libraries. I just went through this with the latest Portal upgrade. Harvest processes were erroring out with a weird message and all I had to do was open and resave some of the older models. But it wasn’t intuitive and since the Workgroup repository includes older models, and the library is getting bigger – being able to just refresh old models to the new version of Erwin would be a great help.

5. Ability to schedule Reverse Engineer compares (using RE templates) to audit Production models

   1. Report on what models need changing

6. Add ability to launch erwin (get model) from Portal. This would help the teams doing reviews. Sometimes they have to get into the library tree bar to see where the model is to get the correct one from Workgroup.

7. Make Schema/Owner an option to show in Explorer bar for individual data models. Add ability to add to name like you can in the graphic view.

8. Provide APIs that would allow for metadata harvesting to build trend histories and research data marts.

I've personally been using it for 23 years. 1 year at the current version - ERwin Workgroup & Portal 9.7

The portal uses TomCat which we inadvertently upgraded to a newer version than could be used when installing another tool on the server. This wasn't easy to diagnose - but the ERwin tech team helped us figure it out. :-)

No issues.

No issues.

Great. They made sure that the initial product demos to Lytx were supported by a really experienced ERwin team - who could answer questions from the high levels that our managers asked to the deep technical ones from the DBAs. They also listened to the company needs and short/long term goals and sold a solution rather than just a tool. I didn't have to fend off high pressure to buy more than what was needed.

Excellent – they always work very closely with us. Their ‘Live Chat’ team is one that I depend on for fast answers - but they provide access to their really experienced teams when a problem is obviously complex. They also have a rich Knowledgebase for self-service research.

No.

Complexity lies in connectivity and supporting tool setup - which isn’t always intuitive.

We worked with Myriad Solutions for the initial installation and more recently the upgrade. Their team is fabulous! They go the extra mile to find solutions and make suggestions as they get to know your environment's quirks.

Unless you are a one person shop – always go with the Workgroup edition and Concurrent licensing, that puts your models in a database for protection and allows the team members to share a license.

Yes – ER Studio, Embarcadero.

This product is a cross platform database designer, data inventory control & metadata library, and supports soft link integration. It can be used to document or design metadata any type of data set and most data modeling styles. Doing your database design first and testing requirements on paper can be used to scope deployments in the correct sequence to support Agile teams.

erwin Evolve by Quest has good options for generating the code. We can efficiently deploy business models into the databases and generate SQL scripts.

erwin Evolve by Quest could have additional features to manage the architecture of enterprises and businesses.

It is a stable application.

They provide good technical documentation.

We have used another enterprise architecture product before. In comparison, erwin has the best features for interface, graphics, and integration with third-party applications.

The initial setup process is straightforward.

I rate erwin Evolve by Quest a nine out of ten.

Data modeling for data warehousing solutions, including forward engineering and reverse engineering for OLTP and dimensional models.

Creating and publishing DW models.

Forward and reverse engineering.

Business process modelling. 

I've primarily used the solution for conceptual logical modeling.

The ability to share and collaborate on the solution is its most valuable feature.

The solution needs to focus on allowing for more integrations.

The solution is stable.

We've had no issues surrounding the scalability of the solution. We have about eight users on it right now. We don't plan to increase usage at this time.

Technical support is good.

We didn't previously use a different solution.

We had an integrator handle the initial setup.

We did not evaluate other products. We just like erwin, so we decided to go with it.

We are currently considering the public cloud deployment model using AWS.

It's a good product. I would rate it eight out of ten.

I am consulting, providing architecture and data management consulting to my clients. I'm a partner of the erwin data management and data modeling product.

Our customers are small or medium enterprise companies.

It's a customizable tool that allows you to do a lot of architectural modeling for customers. You can use different kinds of diagrams to represent the architecture setting.

To a certain extent it's too easy to customize. If it had fewer features to model all kinds of architecture, it would be less complicated. Today's world values agile architecture, which focuses on a few different viewpoints or views of architecture work, like the business capability for example. If a portal can focus on this and have an easy user interface for the end-user, that would be better.

In the future, I would like to see integration with Archimate from The Open Group so that they can build business capability maps easily.

I have been representing erwin and selling this product for two years, and I went through their presale certificate test. I am not a user. I am a presale representative and I demonstrate the product.

The solution is stable because it's a product of many years of history.

The scalability is quite good, and it's normally given from the support team in India. 

The implementation process is too complicated.

I think erwin is quite expensive. I have difficulty selling the portal, in fact.

I have been using ArchiMate for a while. That's an open source, free architecture tool. It's quite simple. It's good enough for medium or small enterprises.

I would rate this solution 6 out of 10. 

Evolve is good for a big enterprise. If you have a lot of tools like governing tools and the architectural policy and rules that are understood by your teams, then it will be a good product for a big enterprise.

Evolve is like a tank. You can do whatever you want with the solution, but you need to customize it. I think that it's not very aligned with the framework for enterprise architecture. MEGA is focused on these enterprise architectures, but it's only for that. With Evolve, you can do everything you want with professional services.

They need to develop Evolve's user experience. For example, MEGA has a useful client view that helps with impact analysis. MEGA provides information about the processes, services, infrastructure, and portfolio of applications in one central view. It lets you see the periphery and relationships among components. This view is impressive, and Evolve doesn't have it.

I've used Evolve for almost eight years. There have been some changes in my team. Half of my team manages Evolve, and the other half manages Casewise. There has been a fusion of the systems in Mexico and the United States. They use MEGA in the United States, so they replaced Evolve with MEGA. However, they are still using Evolve in some areas.

We haven't had any problems with the tools because we integrated and built different dashboards. We haven't had issues because we made some changes in the coding.

You could scale Evolve. 

The people who know how to manage Evolve are Indian, but the company is based in London, so sometimes it can take a while to get an answer due to the time differences. MEGA has local support here in Mexico, so they respond faster.

Setting up Evolve is complex, so you should get training and certification. 

I rate erwin Evolve seven out of 10. Few clients looking are going with Evolve these days because I don't think they even appear on Gartner's Magic Quadrant. They're no longer in the leading sector. Other solutions like MEGA HOPEX are better than erwin.

Our primary use case for this solution is as data modeling tool. 

Enterprise Architecture improved our organization by giving clarity over the data that is available.

I would like to see an improvement in the output of the solution.

The solution is very stable.

The scalability is good, but so far we haven't used the shared version. We use the single stand-alone version. We have only three users, and they are all data architects. We don't use any other staff for maintenance. We also don't plan to increase our usage soon.

The technical support is good.

The initial setup was really straightforward and the deployment was done within one day. 

My advice to others would be to have this solution on your shortlist if you are looking for a data modeling tool. I will rate it an eight out of ten. I would like to some additional features, like data lineage, included in the next release to make it a ten out of ten.