We performed a comparison between erwin Data Modeler by Quest and iServer based on real PeerSpot user reviews.
Find out in this report how the two Enterprise Architecture Management solutions compare in terms of features, pricing, service and support, easy of deployment, and ROI."What has been useful, I have been able to reverse engineer our existing data models to document explicitly referential integrity relationships, primary/foreign keys in the model, and create ERDs that are subject area-based which our clients can use when working with our databases. The reality is that our databases are not explicitly documented in the DDL with primary/foreign key relationships. You can't look at the DDL and explicitly understand the primary/foreign key relationships that exist between our tables, so the referential integrity is not easily understood. erwin has allowed me to explicitly document that and create ERDs. This has made it easier for our clients to consume our databases for their own purposes."
"The product lets us import different types of models from various databases."
"It has centralized storage so that a data model can be shared by different teams."
"It is a scalable solution...The technical support team is fine."
"The ability to collaborate between different members across the organization is the most valuable feature. It gives us the ability to work on the same model, regardless of where we are physically."
"Drag-and-drop data modeling and reverse engineering out of databases are the most valuable features of erwin Data Modeler by Quest."
"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, 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."
"The most valuable features are being able to visualize the data in the diagrams and transform those diagrams into physical database deployments. These features help, specifically, to integrate the data. When the source data is accumulated and modeled, the target model is in erwin and it helps resolve the data integration patterns that are required to map the data to accommodate a model."
"The product has a valuable customized model."
"iServer has valuable features for workflow and document management."
"Integrating the Microsoft documents to the product and visualization matrix where we can see the end-to-end relationship of the network is of great importance to our company."
"Good and effective reporting features, which help in decision making."
"It has helped having data lineage in the business cluster, which is used as control artifacts."
"The solution has wide use within Microsoft products. The integration with Microsoft products, and, in particular, Microsoft Office, is great."
"There were lots of different requirements, and collaboration and review is one of the biggest things. There is also Office 360 integration, and there's flexibility to use it as a database as well."
"We like the governance."
"It is not a very stable solution. I rate the stability five out of ten."
"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."
"I would like to see the reporting capabilities be more dynamic and more inclusive of information. The API is very sparsely understood by people across the user community."
"One of the things I've been talking to the erwin team about through the years is that every data model should have the ability to be multi-language... When I was working at Honda, it became very difficult to work with the Japanese teams using just one model. You can have two models, one in English and one in Japanese, but that means you have to keep the updates back and forth, and that always increases the risk of something not being updated."
"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."
"The modeling product itself is far and above anything else that I've seen on the market. There are certain inconsistencies when it comes to keeping up with other platforms' databases in the reverse-engineering process. It should also support more database platforms."
"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'd really like to see the PDF function become available. It would make my life much easier than what it is at the moment because whenever I need to collaborate with people that do not have erwin, I have to go through the wonkiness of going to Word and then save it from Word into PDF. There's a lot of differences between erwin 4.4 and 2020."
"There are other solutions out there that have a better user interface."
"It runs relatively slowly."
"Cannot see which activities are control activities."
"Enhancing integration options with ERP or ITSM-related solutions for triggering automated requests for process definitions, changes, and tracking them in the iServer."
"We could allocate permissions to use only specific components to the users rather than the entire instance."
"It definitely needs help to improve the visual aspect of the solution."
"There can be some performance issues using the solution that should be improved. When you make modifications modify to files there are embedded data within that can take a while to process."
"The performance is slow, which is something that should be improved."
erwin Data Modeler by Quest is ranked 3rd in Enterprise Architecture Management with 37 reviews while iServer is ranked 6th in Enterprise Architecture Management with 15 reviews. erwin Data Modeler by Quest is rated 8.6, while iServer is rated 7.2. The top reviewer of erwin Data Modeler by Quest writes "The product lets users import different types of models, but it is expensive, and the interface must be improved". On the other hand, the top reviewer of iServer writes "Enables flexible parameters for any process model and has a valuable document management feature ". erwin Data Modeler by Quest is most compared with SAP PowerDesigner, IDERA ER/Studio, Lucidchart, Visio and ARIS Architect and Designer, whereas iServer is most compared with LeanIX, Sparx Systems Enterprise Architect, ARIS BPA, Visio and ARIS Cloud. See our erwin Data Modeler by Quest vs. iServer report.
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