Sparx Systems Enterprise Architect Reviews

We're doing enterprise architecture work primarily. In one case we're looking at enterprise data modeling. In another case is mostly business architecture.

We haven't used the solution long enough to make any observations in terms of the product improving our company's functions. It's too soon to tell.

For us, the solution is evolving still.

I find it performs as well as other solutions that I've used, like QualiWare's Rational System Architect. It performs quite well.

For the most part, we find that it is remarkable how inexpensive it is.

Overall, the solution offers very good packages.

The initial setup is easy.

The presentation graphics need to be improved in future builds. It's primarily an architecture tool. Therefore, it's using certain formulas, and they aren't really very useful in terms of presentation graphics for executives. It's an ongoing issue. You do some kind of diagram, you then have to convert it into a Microsoft PowerPoint in order to get a certain look and feel. Otherwise, the design is just too obscure for executives to understand.

The product needs better tools for defining report templates. Sparx will generate automated reports based on whatever you select from the repository. It has this templating tool that's very flexible, however, I can't get the damn thing to work properly. It's just not very user-friendly. It's almost like a programming language. That's the thing that we keep coming back to tech support with to say, "What are we doing wrong?" If they offered a better report generating front end that will let someone quickly and easily configure what they want in their reports, that would be very useful.

I'm pretty new to the solution. I've used the solution for a little under a year at this point. It's likely been ten or 11 months so far.

While the solution has crashed a few times in the past year, I wouldn't describe it as unstable. There aren't really bugs or glitches on it. Mostly, it's fine.

I can't speak to the level of scalability of the product. The user community for our purposes is quite small. We haven't tested scaling it with larger user groups. However, it's not the type of tool you would role out to a larger community anyway. Therefore, from a performance scalability perspective, it's hard for me to comment.

That said, from a functional scalability perspective, it's packed with all kinds of features. Your enterprise architecture approach could certainly scale up to accommodate more and more of the types of analysis you'd want to perform.

We have two teams that use the solution. In one case, there are three people using it, and in another case there are seven.

We've used technical support in the past.

We've needed them for a few little obscure things and things just that are quite annoying to figure out. They've always been there and they're quite good.

We're quite satisfied with the level of assistance we receive. I would rate them at a perfect ten out of ten.

Personally, I've used a lot of different solutions, and a lot of different kinds of case tools. However, in both my client environments that we are presently using, we presently implemented Sparx and they had nothing like this before. This is really an eye-opener to them and a new kind of field for them to go into.

We found the initial setup to be very straightforward and simple. It's not complex at all. A company shouldn't have any trouble with the deployment process.

The pricing is excellent. It's very inexpensive.

We're just a customer and an end-user.

We're using the latest version of the solution.

We use different deployment models, including cloud and on-premises.

It's an excellent entry-level tool. I say entry level as case tools are typically a very expensive proposition to bring into a business, and not necessarily because of their licensing costs or their implementation costs. It is more the training costs of the individuals to start working and thinking in an architectural way and then using tools like this in a consistent and productive manner. You need a methodology investment and you need training investment, and then you need a setup investment for the actual enterprise architecture program or practice that you're going to work with.

The tool itself is comparable to a bunch of others. However, it's not as expensive as most. It's in fact so cheap that last year, due to delays related to the COVID lockdown, I ended up buying a license for myself. It's that inexpensive. It cost less than Microsoft Word. It's an excellent way for a company to start or an organization to start using an enterprise architecture discipline. However, it's not an end-to-end solution. It could be an end-to-end solution. It just involves training of resources and change management for different processes and for governance and all this. A lot of companies just either don't realize that at all or aren't prepared to make the investment outside of the cheap license.

I would rate the solution eight out of ten.

It offers a comprehensive toolkit that it provides very good capabilities. The kinds of coverage that it gives to enterprise architecture tasks are great. The diagrammatic flexibility that it has, the methodological flexibility, and diagrammatic flexibility are also very helpful. It can support lots of different metamodels that will allow you to implement different enterprise architecture methods. It'll diagram them all. It does a very good job of allowing you to structure your environment so that you can support lots of different kinds of analysis across domains of enterprise architecture. It's very flexible in that sense. For these reasons, I give it fairly high marks.

I work for a big government organization, and I am an advisor. I provide advice about the standard IT solutions, BI solutions, and integration solutions. I advise about the standards that we have. We are trying to make everything as standardized as possible for the whole organization. While advising, I think about whether a solution is good enough and meets the standards. I also consider if we have to do some upgrades or if we need to change the solution. I only give advice. I am not the one making decisions. 

Modeling is a part of my work, and it has a lot of standard modeling languages. It is quite wide, and a lot is possible in it. We are not programming it ourselves, but if you are into programming and developing software yourself, you can go further and do a lot with Sparx. You can work from the framework and go into the details.

With this solution, you get a lot of value at a low cost. It is also quite intuitive in terms of use. I like the use of it. 

The fact that you can do a lot yourself is a plus point, but it also becomes a challenge because you need an understanding of the programming languages to get things to work. It becomes challenging for those who are not very good at programming. You have standard reports, but if you want to make your own reports, you have to program it. Similarly, if you want validations rules, you have to take care of them yourself. 

I have been using this solution for about five years.

It is stable.

We don't have a lot of users because we are not developing the software ourselves. We just use a few models of the software.

We have our own functional maintenance. We also have an external company for technical support. They get in touch with Sparx's technical support if needed, but I don't have an idea about if they need support. 

Its price is very good for the value that you get with it.

It can do so many things. Because of this, sometimes, it can be a bit difficult to find what you need, which is logical and expected in every tool with a lot of features. It is kind of a project in itself to learn to work with it. It is quite easy when you work with it for some time.

It is a very good solution. Before you start, I would recommend considering the following:

• How will you use it?
• Do you need a central database or does everything work separately?
• Do you need a lot of exports and imports for other things? 

There could be challenges in terms of the integrations of the models and when there are a lot of people working on it. You need to think about who is given what rights, and you shouldn't let everyone work on everything because it could become a mess. You need to think carefully about how to organize your work before you start working with it. 

I would rate Sparx Systems Enterprise Architect an eight out of ten.

When I'm developing some of my applications, I collect the requirements from the customer and understand the workflows for different scenarios. I then model the workflows as the point of reference for the development team.

It allows some kind of reverse engineering, where if you have a database or some different languages, you can reverse engineer and get the diagrams, which is very helpful.

The Business Process Modeling or BPM part is the most valuable. Its ability to simulate scenarios is also very useful.

It can also create descriptions of the workflows. It has a feature in which if you create some BPMN process, a workflow diagram, and the description inside, you can actually simulate the whole scenario, and you get the description. That's very handy.

The Business Process Modeling or BPM feature can be improved to make it more interactive and user friendly because it is a tool for technical people. My current use is only for business process modeling notation and putting in the icons etc. You need to take them in as a class, which makes things very complex. Because of this complexity, it is not an easy-to-handle solution.

Enterprise Architect is not very good for mockups. We cannot create user screens and other similar kinds of stuff, which is bad. For these things, we prefer to use Axure RP and other similar solutions. They should either remove this feature from this product or provide some kind of connectivity with Axure RP so that people can do better mockups of screens and import them.

They need to augment and strengthen the BPM feature, which is the main feature. They need to put in some elements like artificial intelligence and augmented reality. They should look into such features because these things are coming up.

I started using this solution in 2003 when it was version two.

It is quite stable.

It is quite scalable. I didn't have any need to involve 30 or 40 technical business analysts or users. We had just a few users because it is used during the business analysis and design phase. Every team can use its own installation.

It is hard to access those people. You can get in touch only through email. The same problem is there with Visual Paradigm. They are also accessible only through email. I would rate their support a five out of ten.

There were two products, which were very popular initially. One was STP that was developed by people who started the object paradigm and human modeling. Rational Rose was the other one, which was taken away by IBM, and it was lost. After that, many other tools appeared.

The initial setup is straightforward. It is very easy to install.

It is really good if you want to develop workflows. It is not good for data modeling. For data modeling, Visual Paradigm is better.

I would rate Enterprise Architect a seven out of ten.

We are using this solution for data modeling, data warehouses. We build the data models in the tool.

We are creating models, and working on workflows for creating the data models. There will be other teams that will change or modify them.

We are looking to have a process where other teams can change the data models and then their changes will be reviewed by the owners. Those are the workflows we are looking to link by using Sparx.

It is a very rich tool in terms of the functionality and the types of diagrams that you can create in this tool.

It gives us many options to create many other types of diagrams.

For data modeling, it is not very mature when comparing with other data modeling tools.

In terms of the workflows, we were initially thinking of having something automated where you have the options to check-in and check-out your data models. This would mean that you can get your data modeling changes reviewed by some of the team members.

The option to check-in and check-out option is not available in this tool. We are doing the steps manually to run the workflow that we defined. 

Even with the changes that the other team members will make, the owners of these respective areas will have to manually identify those changes and then merge them back to the enterprise models. That is what is lacking with this solution, that we have seen so far.

In the next release, I would like to see an automated way to check-in and check-out your data models and with the review process, where multiple people can make changes to a model, and with the workflow, everything will be automated where the data models can request someone to review the modifications. This would be everything that is needed in the next release.

We just started using this tool a couple of months ago.

So far, the technical support has been great. 

Support is a part of our license agreement.

They have helped us with setting up some of the initial support and workflows and that was very good.

Previously, I worked with IBM data modeling, called Data Architect tool with a different company. My experience with Erwin was brief but not very extensive.

When I changed jobs, we were evaluating other data modeling tools and finally chose the Sparx Enterprise Architect.

I wasn't a part of the initial setup.  

We had the help of the Sparx Enterprise consultants to set up this solution.

I am using Sparx as a client or a user of the tool, and as a user, I had to install the Sparx client on my machine. That was simple enough.

The configuration on these client machines is easy.   

The licensing is not as expensive as some of the other data modeling tools such as Erwin.

Other than the manual steps we have to take, the product is pretty fancy and gives you a lot of options. I would rate this solution a seven out of ten.

Enterprise architecture: Capabilities and business services modeling, business processes mapping and analysis, project prioritization and planning (using ArchiMate and BPMN notations); 

Information architecture: Business information model (Information Entities modeling and Security Classification of entities (Availability, Integrity, Confidentiality)  (using UML notation and specific TAG values);

Solution architecture: Conceptual components architecture (using ArchiMate or UML notation);

Integration of all models in a central collaborative with multi-users, multi-domains, and a multileveled architecture repository structured and organized following the TOGAF 9.x Content model.

Supporting all of the important architecture modeling notations and all types and levels of architecture modeling in a secure, collaborative, and well-integrated model repository is really unifying and beneficial.

Having the possibility of integrating and sharing all architecture models inside a centralized repository for all architecture stakeholders provides immense and cohesive insight into all architecture domains and dimension interrelationships. 

The capability to analyze interdependencies between architectural elements makes for a very reliable comprehension of all architectural interactions, as opposed to trying to figure it out from a pile of Visio and PowerPoints (or any other diagramming tool) independent documents.

The product offers very good support for all mainstream modeling notations and architectural frameworks. It has a very complete and coherent environment for business, architecture, and solution modeling. If what you need is not directly available, you can extend the modelings capabilities to suit your specials needs (TAG values, metamodel extensions (MDG), scripting, API interfaces, ...).

It has a very stable and performant environment. This a necessary capability for supporting a large number and varied kinds of modelers (Business architects & Business analysts, Enterprise architects, Information architects, Domain & Solution Architects, Security Architects, ...), all working at the same time on shared and live models. 

The constant evolution of usability and integration capabilities: Nothing is perfect, but constant polishing and enhancement are reassuring. 

Even if there are web-based tools in the Enterprise Architecture tool ecosystem (like Prolaborate), the main modeling application is still a fat client application. For some organizations, it is still a concern and a significant disqualification criterion for adoption.

The capability to model and analyze while maintaining coherent traceability within different variants (variations or versions) of a future architecture has been greatly enhanced in the recent versions of Enterprise Architect. It requires a very mature, systemic, and methodic approach that is not easy to grasp for junior modelers. 

I have been using Sparx Systems Enterprise Architect for eight years.

In eight years of enterprise-wide modeling with multiple architects and business analysts working day-in-day-out with the environment, we have never had a single major problem and we never lost integrity.

The tool is very robust but assuring complete integrity over time requires competent quality control.

Enterprise Architect is a very flexible and scalable tool. It can be set-up different ways to accommodate capacity, volume, and a number of simultaneous modeling users. 

Almost never have to go through customer service/technical support but, the few times I needed it, they were very responsive and supportive. 

In different contexts and organizations, I have tried and used different modeling tools. That said, when I have the choice of tool to use for architecture modeling I always select Enterprise Architect for its usability (even though it is a complex tool), completeness, and extensibility.

It is usually very simple and straightforward. The real work is setting the standard for collaborative work between teams and projects.

For Enterprise Architect, it is usually very simple and I do it myself easily.

For efficient integration with other tools, I usually suggest going through a vendor team.

It was not measured recently, but being able to analyze traceability and architectural dependencies doing impact analysis has tremendous value. 

Avoiding multiple duplicated elements and being coherent and avoiding confusion about naming or modeling notations from different models or symbols from different modeling tool is very reassuring.

Define your immediate needs and objectives, start small and focused.

Identify some motivated champions inside your organization and find a coach to help them get to know the tools. 

Initially, get comfortable and efficient with the vanilla setup of the tool. Do not try to personalize or extend the tool unless you are confident that it will bring more benefits than confusion. 

Define templates and model examples to set the organizational standards for modeling. Evaluate your progress, adhesion to standards, and quality of models regularly. 

Identify other domains of modeling opportunities that could bring benefits to your organization. With experts and senior architects define a mid/long term vision and costs benefits for integrating all aspects of modeling that are important to you over time.

Annually, revised your mid/long term vision.

In my career, I was involved in many modeling tool selection exercises in many organizations and had the chance to compare most of the available tools on the market (Rational Rose, RSM, RSA, IBM RDA, CaseWise, Mega, Aris, ...). To date, I haven't the opportunity to try and evaluate BiZZdesign.

Hang around in the user's community to gain a perspective of what others do and don't do.

There are several ‘primary’ use case:

1: Designing a solution

2: Reverse-engineering the solution from a poorly documented code base - all too common in my 25 years of coding.

3: Communication of concepts, rules, ideas to devs, testers, dev team management

4: Importantly keeping the evolving codebase and the design ‘close-coupled’, with EA that is easy. Code evolves and sometimes the design often changes a lot - how often do devs avoid the design because it’s just way outdated?? It should be the first port of call in a bug fix - not the last.

High/Low-level Design, Test case identification. Mindmapping, functional requirements elicitation, use case elicitation, test cases, activity diagrams. I am a contract developer/designer, for me, it’s vital to get up to speed quickly with new and complex systems. I have often used my own EA license to get a handle on the real model - for me, that's been vital.

Sparx has mainly improved my organization through the communication of ideas through the sharing of models and a variety of diagramming techniques. Consistency is a key attribute of a good codebase. This tool helps a lot in the maintenance and organization of a lot of complexity.

It has led some teams to do better code reviews - to be less focussed on coding conventions (syntax) and more focussed on the semantics because of the abstraction level clear design affords.

We all know understanding is ALL - so Communication is vital, this tool makes it easy.

• Mind mapping as a top-level tool for conceptual brainstorming and identification of key concepts in the conceptual model.
• Use cases / scenarios / activity diagram generation
• The fact that it’s very easy to create child diagrams in diagrams and so keep each diagram clear, focussed, and not bloated. This is very important and a powerful aid in clarifying the model
• Easy forward and reverse engineering - to code and DB design/implementation is an iterative process so there is a real use case for a tool like EA to make the update process very easy
• It's possible to write stored procedures in the EA SQL database to extract steps that can be used as code comments to structure the code directly from activity diagrams. This is something I find really useful to speed up the coding and keep it aligned with the low-level design.
• There are some powerful ideas code generation templates and transforms. Sparx has made the EA object model available so you can add your own popup menu items etc. It is very customizable for the power user.

It is a good affordable that is actively evolving, I think the modeling of activity diagrams could be optimized - currently, they insist on you specifying whether a connector is a control flow or an object flow for instance. It is a minor point, but since this sort of diagram is popular in that it affords both the chance to effectively constrain the model whilst leaving freedom for the next stage in the dev process - which key in good design then it should a high priority to optimize this rather than waste resources unnecessary 'bells and whistles'?

There are several little things they could and should optimize. But the platform is good and could be the base a whole tranch or really useful features. for example: to be able to easily run code set up in unit tests to reverse engineer specific code blocks to yield sequence/activity diagrams, would be really useful when as a contractor you have to 'firefight' the design from the code. 

Personally I would like to see the database normalized better. It's really just a data dump whose business rules are contained in the front end client code - it is way way way off 3nf.

Because its easy to create diagrams one needs to be vigilant on the housekeeping of orphaned fragments - I have written my own scripts to do this, may they are available now.

I don't make much use of the traceability Matrix, yet that should be a feature that I should use if I could see it made it easy to ensure the traceability of ALL the design to the code (completeness)

However, it works. It’s good to use and it’s affordable for a single contractor. It has REALLY helped me. It is a good product and I am sure it will only continue to improve.

I have been using Sparx for ten years. 

IBM Rational, but not many companies could afford it.

Pricing is an obvious selling point and so are the flexibility and feature set.

At the time I first used it it was a no brainer, there was only Sparx out there as affordable and serious software - there was Visio. Now there are real alternatives.

It supports a variety of databases - if you have more than say 5 do not use access. Maybe it is better now but it did cause us problems when 30 devs were using it.

Access DB is ideal for the single user or very small team because its a file-based repo which is easy to back up as part of the project back up at my home-based office I use both Access and MSSQL repos - you can migrate - but its not a simple exercise. I guess if you did it a lot you would have a well-documeted process - i.e picking the wrong driver is/was possible and it will give you an incomplete/corrupt migration. That being said I do do it because I like to get at the SQL repo directly. 

EA and SA Diagramming

Allowed us to validate design changes and give an indication of the code before even speaking with developers. It also allowed the architects to reuse work done by other projects or by other architecture specialities. It is more structured than tools like Visio making it easier to build accurate diagrams.

• Ability to manage a meta-model that support a single source of truth for models
• Ability to capture concept thinking diagrams (referred to as white boarding)
• Reverse engineering capabilities
• Collaborative functionality
• Ability to trace through from a requirement statement to impacted logic was extremely powerful to us

Collaborating on a medium to large model resulted in significant performance problems, in some cases critical issues. It did not include sufficient flexibility for architecture work targeting business stakeholders. Very much a tool focused at application architecture despite having functions covering higher architecture domains.

I've been using it for eight years in total, and five on a daily basis.

We have had some stability issues but these varied version by version.

The scalability issues limit us from expanding the use of the tool.

Initially this was excellent in early versions. The growth of the product has changed as the company has grown. We were not able to get resolution to scalability issues in reasonable timeframes for versions nine or 10.

IBM's tools and a number of other tools primarily UML focused. In v7 Sparx was miles ahead of the competition, fast, flexible, priced affordable.

It was straightforward for single use, but for collaborative use it is slightly more complicated.

In house team. If you're thinking of scaling it up I would recommend linking the commitment to pay for the product to demonstration of the tools ability to support the team size and use you are proposing and ensure contracts are in place with tight SLAs if issues occur.

It's impossible to tell, as the tool has helped to swing decision making in a few high level business meetings but mostly considered a tool to improve the efficiency of architecture.

The current market landscape is changing. The recent work I've done with Orbus IServer to be a serious contender. Other tools now exist like LeanIX as cheaper solutions but SaaS based.

Be realistic about what you team can achieve. In a single use situation there is little advise needed but if you are intending to deliver it into an organisation, ensure that

• The way it will change how you work is possible (considering people and processes)
• The cost is reasonable
• The competition has been assessed using a POC not marketing ware (e.g. Orbus)
• The training impact is understood (The tool is not trival to use)
• The business view is not ignored. In my experience this tool does not remove the need to render information for a business audience separately and neither does tools like Orbus.

We use the product to design and develop databases, leveraging its features to create robust database models.

The product's most valuable features are the database design and development capabilities. These features are adequate for my needs, allowing me to create detailed and efficient database models.

The product could be improved in terms of its ease of use and documentation. While it offers a lot of functionality, it can be difficult to grasp how to utilize these features effectively.

I have been using Sparx Systems Enterprise Architect for over five years. 

The platform is stable and reliable.

My experience with customer service and support has been positive. They generally respond within a reasonable time when I have questions or issues.

Positive

The initial setup was straightforward.

The pricing is reasonable, with the ultimate version costing around 290 Euros for renewal and the initial purchase around 600 Euros. There are no additional costs for maintenance or support, as these are included.

I would recommend this solution for those who work in diverse environments and need a versatile tool.

I rate it a seven.