SAP PowerDesigner Reviews

I mainly use it to create application maps and to connect other applications to IOS platforms. Usually, we use PowerDesigner in order to study the impact of modifying columns and the cut-offs in order to deploy a new data model. I also use it to handle change requests on IS, for example, pushing data models or applying the follow-up on changes done directly on other IOS.

I think that the user experience could use a lot of improvement. 

It would also be good to have a connection with CMDB. In particular, the gap analysis. Usually, when we work on a project, on enterprise architect tools, we start with a paper version and then connect the CMDB. PowerDesigner cannot analyze the gap between reality and the theoretical schema we build.

I have been using SAP PowerDesigner for about four to five years.

It is quite stable. The tool is widely used among big companies here in France and North Africa. It has evolved through the years. When it comes to stability, I would give it a ten out of ten.

It can handle everything. It can reproduce all data models, all connections, all APIs, and so on. I would give it a nine out of ten. 

So far, I have not had any need to contact SAP's technical support. 

I would say that the Linux and MEGA are intuitive, but not complete. Linux cannot track down the data model inside the databases, but it's very intuitive and user-friendly. So PowerDesigner is complete, but it's for experts and cannot be used by junior teams.

The onboarding of the solution is very difficult when we're creating a project from scratch. Even with the new version of the design, it's very difficult to create a new project and start building blocks around it. It is a very efficient tool once the first scheme is created, the first version. Then we create the business view, then the platform view, then the application view, but what could use improvement is the user experience. We cannot start without a very long tutorial, and I would say it's not very user-friendly.

The licensing model is quite expensive. It costs approximately one hundred thousand euros to initially set it up.

I would rate PowerDesigner an eight out of ten.

I'm an IT architect. I make use of this particular tool end-to-end, especially when I design objects. I also can immediately create the frameworks in PowerBuilder.

In just one click, I can create everything that I want.

I can download the solution right onto my PC.

It's a fantastic tool. It offers lots of flexibility. It saves companies pain and it keeps everything consistent. Whatever the idea was that started at the business level can go down to the database level.

It offers a lot of features in one solution. You would have to get multiple other products to bundle together all of the capabilities that you get in just this product.

The one issue I've found goes a long way back, especially from version 6.0 onward. In 6.0 there was a fantastic modeling functionality called "Process Analysis Modeling." It was very simple and very straightforward, yet it covered practically all of the three or four important components, which the software should have.

Later, that capability was taken out of PowerDesigner. It got lost somewhere. Yet it was something that was very, very nice to have. SAP, they missed it somehow. Maybe it was removed in error? If they could bring it back, that would be amazing. 

When we had done some of the model icons to other models attached business process modeling, was far easier. The functionality has gone away. 

The solution is very, very expensive. It would be ideal if it was a more affordable product.

I've been using PowerDesigner intermittently, not continuously. I have been using a few other CASE tools as well. In my estimation, I've been using this one since 1994.

The solution is quite stable. We haven't had any issues in that regard.

The solution is based on a RDBMS database, a proper or relational database. It is a one to multi-person version. Any number of people can work simultaneously on it. They actually can buy the license for their own computer, that's all. Therefore, it can scale easily across teams. You just need to license.

I have a team of about ten people and we all use it. We're a small consultancy firm. Everyone uses it.

We will continue to use the solution and increase it as required in the future.

We don't need to purchase technical support per se. If there is any emergency bug fix, it's called UBS. They would send it to us, especially if we signed a maintenance contract with them. if you don't have a maintenance contract, you can just ask for the UBS. 

If our suppliers want us to use other tools, we of course will, however, we've been using this solution since 1994. I do not recall if we used anything before that, or what it might have been.

The initial setup is very straightforward. It's not complex at all. You just install it. You just click on the install button and go ahead and install everything. 

It will also ask if I want a backend repository database. If you say yes, then they will install the database. It is called a Sybase SQL Anyware. Now it is owned by SAP. I don't know exactly what they call it - maybe SAP SQL Anyware or Sybase SQL Anyware. 

In the end, it doesn't take more than five or ten minutes. it's very quick and efficient.

There was no need for any type of consultant or integrator to assist me in the deployment. It's a very simple process.

The solution requires a license for each user. If you want to add another user, you just buy another license. It's pretty straightforward. 

It's an expensive product.

I'm not using the latest version of the solution, I'm using the one that came out before version 16.

When we go to specific clients if they would like us to define it or some other product, what we do is we model whatever things that they want, inside those particular tools. Some of the tools don't have the entire modeling capability that PowerDesigner offers.

If a company has a team of people or even one single consultant who has the capability to design business architecture, software architecture, database architecture, or infrastructure architecture, they should go for this particular product. None of the other products offer all of these capabilities in one tool.

This is especially true when you design on one model. The architects creating them can pull into the next model - whatever they want to create. For example, if I'm designing a business process diagram, we will be able to capture some data architecture. When we reach the data architecture part of it, all the data items, whatever they already created in the business architecture, can be pulled. It automatically creates the database from the ER diagram.

I'd rate the solution nine out of ten overall.

In one company we used SAP PowerDesigner for documentation and building logical data models and a new platform in the company. Additionally, it was used for documents and resources for the data warehouse. It was a resource and module company and we had to describe every source, table, et cetera. 

SAP PowerDesigner is good because you can generate physical data models after you have a logical data model. It helped us a lot.

The most valuable features of the solution are it's built very well, easy to use, and simple to describe freely what is needed in logical and physical data models.

SAP PowerDesigner could improve by making the repository easier to understand. It is difficult to understand how the repository works because when I used logical models as part of the team, we wanted to use them together and update the older versions of the data model version but it was confusing. The repository needs to be explained.

It would be helpful to have a checking system on the objects that are generated from the physical data model on the specific database to help see if there is a difference on the database side and on the SAP PowerDesigner documentation side.

I have been using SAP PowerDesigner for approximately five years.

SAP PowerDesigner is a highly stable solution. I have been using this solution in many different companies for over five years with no stability concerns.

I rate the stability of SAP PowerDesigner a ten out of ten.

The scalability of SAP PowerDesigner is good. This solution is used in platforms that are more likely to expand over time.

There are 10 people in the company that is using this solution and it is used frequently.

I rate the scalability of SAP PowerDesigner a ten out of ten.

I have not used the support from SAP PowerDesigner.

I have used Erwin Data Modeler and it was not as intuitive as SAP PowerDesigner. I was attempting to use Erwin Data Modeler by myself and it was difficult to learn.

The main advantage of SAP PowerDesigner compared to other solutions is the various sources of database it can connect and deliver data models, and do reverse engineering. Not every modeler tool can do reverse engineering, forward engineering, versioning, version control, and additional properties on the objects, such as core physical options. I'm using Oracle connectors. You have everything you want to have and you can deliver every object code in SAP PowerDesigner.

It is easy to set up because after you download the installer you click next multiple times and you are finished. You can install every specification test and feature. It has many features, and you can install everything, instead of everything individually, it is easier.

If you want to build logical or physical data models for fun, experience, or studying, it's easy to install and set up.

I rate the initial setup of SAP PowerDesigner a nine out of ten.

We did the implementation of the solution in-house.

It would be beneficial if this tool became more popular for developers in the future.

I rate SAP PowerDesigner a ten out of ten.

I use it for business analysis to understand my clients' business flows. I use the various tools available in SAP and the conceptual data models to analyze and understand the business flow.

The physical database model is definitely the most valuable feature because it describes normalization exactly the way you understand the data, and it deploys it perfectly with open source systems.

Even with Microsoft database systems, it describes the data perfectly. I can just include a picture of the database model into my design specifications, and developers would be able to understand it perfectly.

The focus is more on mainstream development environments, and I see a lack of focus on the open source world. I think SAP PowerDesigner probably interfaces better with SQL Server and Db2 but not with open source databases like PostgreSQL and MySQL.

I'm an Apple user and not a Microsoft user, so I would love to have SAP PowerDesigner be available on macOS and not just on Microsoft. Right now, I am forced to install parallels and run a virtual machine on my Apple.

Yes, it's stable, and I haven't found any bugs. Provided that my work files are stored in the cloud, I can access all the models from both my laptop and desktop computers without a problem. The way that they've designed access to the models is quite good.

The interface is way better with SAP PowerDesigner. Other solutions are limited in their designs. They simply focus on the database, for example, and not on the different types of models.

I would advise you to just start using SAP PowerDesigner because it's intuitive. You have to be a software engineer if you want to use it; you have to know what you're doing. You can't use it as a casual user. However, the models use standards, so they're not difficult to use once you know what you're doing. If you want to design a database, there are other tools that have similar conventions, but SAP's implementation is intuitive and easy to understand. So, my advice is to just directly use it.

Apart from some improvements needed to integrate better with open source systems, SAP PowerDesigner is an excellent tool. It's very easy to use and is very stable. I would give it a rating of nine on a scale from one to ten.

We were reverse-engineering several databases and doing comparisons.

The most valuable feature is that it is a very fast reverse engineering process. It does a very expansive comparison. 

In terms of improvement, the pricing is a bit high. 

I didn't investigate whether we could run business process simulations like you can do with erwin's process modeling tool. I know you can do process modeling in PowerDesigner. I just don't know if you could run simulations of the process.

I used SAP PowerDesigner for a year. 

It is very stable. 

It didn't seem to really need much extendability. For our features, it covered everything out of the box.

There was only one user for this solution, a data architect. 

We did not require any staff for the deployment or maintenance.

I did not use technical support.

Before PowerDesigner we were using IDERA and erwin. PowerDesigner was better than IDERA, but it's obviously a lot more expensive, so IDERA could be a better value.

With PowerDesigner, I had the whole studio. I had the business process solution. With IDERA there are separate downloads and everything so I only used the data modeling studio.

The initial setup was straightforward. It took around one hour. 

I did the deployment myself. 

If you have the money for it, buy it. If you were budgeted, it would be a worthwhile investment.

I would rate PowerDesigner an eight out of ten. It is very complete and robust. If you're an SAP shop, without question you'd want to use it because you can generate your ETL code as well. That also separates conceptual, logical, and physical modeling really well. I don't know if it's as complete though as erwin's solution. But erwin's solution is evolving and getting better. PowerDesigner has some room to improve, but it's still pretty solid.

My primary use case for this solution is to design databases, but I have also used it to design processes.

I also know how to add new features and program using the API. We added some new features to PowerDesigner about five years ago.

The most valuable feature is that we can convert CDM (Conceptual Data Model) to PDM (Physical Data Model), and then prepare an SQL statement to be executed.

It has a powerful engineering feature where if you change the data on a secure server then it will change it in PowerDesigner, too.

This solution has good tools for big data, where you can manage large and complex databases. By comparison, tools such as Enterprise Architect and Visio have problems with big databases.

This product does not have a good BPMN Modeler. Also, the simulations for BPMN modelers are not integrated well enough. If we want this functionality then we have to use another program. Compare this to Visual Paradigm, where we do have a good simulation for the BPMN modeler. 

It is a very stable solution, which is one of the advantages of using PowerDesigner, especially in big databases.

I have not had to speak with technical support for this solution. 

The setup of this solution is easy, but using it is rather complex.

Everywhere that I have used this solution, it was installed by somebody else such as a consultant. However, the installation was easy.

I would rate this solution a nine out of ten.

My primary use case is for data modeling which I then share with our IT department. We are customers of SAP and I'm a data consultant and GDPR.

I really like the import-export feature. It has a specific template that's helpful for importing metadata and that's very helpful for me. 

The tool requires a level of specific knowledge in order to be able to use it so it's not user-friendly at all. It could be more intuitive. I'd like to see better data quality and a dictionary feature in an upcoming release. 

I've been using this solution for six months. 

The solution is stable. 

I don't find this solution to be scalable. 

We're currently looking for external support because SAP are not very proactive when it comes to support.

The initial setup is somewhat complex, although I've seen worse. We work with the vendors to implement this product. Deployment time was around two weeks and the installation took a day. The solution doesn't require any maintenance. We currently have 10 users, and we want to expand that but because the tool is not user-friendly we haven't done that yet. 

SAP is quite expensive, particularly as there are other softwares and tools available that are cheaper or open source, that offer additional features and functionality. With SAP you need to pay extra for some features. 

The solution is useful for data warehousing. I'm a contractor and I work with various companies. Each of them have different versions of the product installed, some on-prem and some in the cloud.

I mostly work on the conceptual and logical side of things, and I enjoy how easy it is to use.

I've tried to use Power Designer to bring in images, which didn't work very well at all.

I think it's probably one of the best solutions, but it is not at all easy to deploy in a big organization. I think it's a problem because of internal processes, and you have to find the right person to help you. SAP as a whole is a very big, complex animal.

I have used this solution on-and-off for 23 years. 

It is a very stable solution, but we have big issues if we try to bring in FSLDM. I'm sure Power Designer can handle it, but I think it drops the links because FSLDM is such a huge model. You can't always trust it because FSLDM was not developed in Power Designer.

I think it's a scalable solution. In one company we have a 38-user license, but that's a very large bank. In another company, there's only one person doing data modeling.

The complexity depends on the client, the firewall, and the company's rules of who can use and view different things. 

The implementation can be done in-house. The time it takes depends on the client. In some instances, it takes quite a while if there are a lot of firewall issues to deal with and the client wants it deployed in the cloud.

I would not recommend this solution to others who are considering it. 

I would rate this solution as an eight out of ten.