We performed a comparison between erwin Data Modeler by Quest and Visio based on real PeerSpot user reviews.
Find out in this report how the two Business Process Design solutions compare in terms of features, pricing, service and support, easy of deployment, and ROI."We can create mappings in erwin and possibly data dictionaries."
"The product allows us to reuse entities and attributes."
"The solution’s code generation ensures accurate engineering of data sources, as there is no development time. Code doesn't even have to be reviewed. We have been using this solution for so long and all the code which has been generated is accurate with the requirements. Once we generate the DDLs out of the erwin tools, the development team does a quick review of the script line by line. They will just be running the script on the database and looking into other requirements, such as the index. So, there is less effort from development side to create tables or build a database."
"The fitting model is very intuitive."
"When you're getting down to the database level, where you're building a design and you're creating DDL out of it, or you're going in the other direction where you're reaching into system catalogs and bringing things back, that starts to really require specialization. Visio isn't going to reverse-engineer that for you. Those features in erwin are valuable."
"The modeling portion of the tool is the most valuable. There are some notes, naming standards, and other functions that we use as well. There's a whole boatload of functionality in this thing and we use maybe 10% of it. It seems to be pretty common that not all the functionality is fully utilized. But it's just got gobs and gobs of stuff that you can implement if you so choose to."
"It's a safeguard for me because I'm always concerned that somebody is free handing it and will forget a key coming from the parent. The migrating keys are a great feature. Identifying relationships, non-identifying relationships, and being visually right there to understand the differences are great features. erwin is key to being able to visually understand whatever the customer is requesting. They'll give you words on a paper, but once they can actually view it as a picture, it really comes to life. The data comes to life to where they understand exactly what they're asking for."
"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."
"The most valuable feature of Visio is the credential management, endpoint manager, and active directory for Microsoft Azure for our hybrid infrastructure. Additionally, there are plenty of features available."
"Visio is outstanding because it has features that are useful for project management."
"The thing I like most about Visio is the stencils. As the product has matured over time, it comes with more stencils and objects that you can just pick out of the menu and go with."
"Visio has allowed us to create good diagrams for our technical employees to consume. The solution provides templates, is straightforward, and has tools for the easy creation of diagrams."
"The most valuable feature is the ability to draw models quickly."
"Just the fact that a majority of the industry uses it, and you've got third-party templates that were created."
"The diagrams Visio creates are quite impressive in the sense that we can cooperate with more colleagues in one task and see the flow of the process."
"What I like most about the solution is that It's quite easy to use."
"It is not a very stable solution. I rate the stability five out of ten."
"I would like the solution to be more user-friendly to deploy."
"I am not so happy with its speed. Sometimes, it can have problems with connections."
"Some Source official systems give us DDLs to work with and they have contents not required to be part of the DDL before we reverse engineer in the erwin DM. Therefore, we manually make changes to those scripts and edit them, then reverse-engineer within the tool. So, it does take some time to edit these DDL scripts generated by the source operational systems. What I would suggest: It would be helpful if there were a place within the erwin tool to import the file and automatically eliminate all the unnecessary lines of code, and just have the clean code built-in to generate the table/data model."
"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."
"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."
"The only real complaint I have is the time it takes to do a database comparison on a large model. If they could speed that up, that would be the only thing I can think of that needs improvement."
"Complete Compare is set up only to compare properties that are of interest to us, but some of the differences cannot be brought over from one version of the model to another. This is despite the fact that we are clicking to bring objects from one place to another. Therefore, it's hard to tell at times if Complete Compare is working as intended without having to manually go into the details and check everything. If it could be redesigned to a degree where it is easier to use when we bring things over from one site to another and be sure that it's been done correctly, that would be nice to have. We would probably use the tool more often if the Complete Compare were easier to use."
"Lacks the ability to analyze the different relations between activities, positions and roles."
"To be able to extract a report for business project management notations would be ideal."
"Indeed, Visio should progress beyond its current stage of solely drawing diagrams and transition into a more advanced phase, possibly integrating with different packages or aligning with Microsoft's offerings. It could potentially evolve into a comprehensive business process management solution, comparable to tools like Addis or Signavio, thereby competing in the realm of process management tools. It might be advantageous to explore functionalities such as process simulations or benchmarking, introducing simulators to discern potential bottlenecks or errors within complex flow diagrams. This addition would prove valuable for business analysts seeking insights into the intricacies of their diagrams, aligning with the evolving trends observed over the past six years."
"The solution's initial setup was a bit complex for me."
"It requires a lot of skill to get into it."
"Visio is not as scalable as other tools due to the proprietary restriction. You cannot customize it or scale it up like the way you do with Trello or Jira. Microsoft places restrictions on things that you can do with Visio."
"I can't speak to any missing features. It's been fine so far."
"The auto-routing feature could be better."
erwin Data Modeler by Quest is ranked 9th in Business Process Design with 37 reviews while Visio is ranked 1st in Business Process Design with 100 reviews. erwin Data Modeler by Quest is rated 8.6, while Visio is rated 7.8. 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 Visio writes "A software for drawing a variety of diagrams which include flowcharts, org charts, building plans, floor plans, data flow diagrams". erwin Data Modeler by Quest is most compared with SAP PowerDesigner, IDERA ER/Studio, Lucidchart, Sparx Systems Enterprise Architect and AWS Well-Architected Tool, whereas Visio is most compared with Sparx Systems Enterprise Architect, Bizagi, Visual Paradigm, IBM Blueworks Live and ARIS BPA. See our Visio vs. erwin Data Modeler by Quest report.
See our list of best Business Process Design vendors.
We monitor all Business Process Design reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.