Try our new research platform with insights from 80,000+ expert users

AtScale Adaptive Analytics (A3) vs erwin Data Intelligence by Quest comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

AtScale Adaptive Analytics ...
Ranking in Data Governance
34th
Average Rating
5.0
Number of Reviews
1
Ranking in other categories
Data Virtualization (4th), BI (Business Intelligence) Tools (37th), BI on Hadoop (7th)
erwin Data Intelligence by ...
Ranking in Data Governance
9th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
18
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2025, in the Data Governance category, the mindshare of AtScale Adaptive Analytics (A3) is 0.3%, up from 0.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of erwin Data Intelligence by Quest is 2.1%, down from 2.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Data Governance
 

Featured Reviews

it_user822762 - PeerSpot reviewer
The GUI interface is nice and easy to use, but the organization of the icons is not saved across users
Connecting to a Hadoop database to create a cube to connect to Tableau. We want to be able to easily create cubes which can be connected to Tableau for visualization The product had many issues. We had great collaboration with the product development team, but the product was not able to meet our…
Roy Pollack - PeerSpot reviewer
The solution provides more profound insights into legacy data movements, lineages, and definitions in the short term.
We have loaded over 300,000 attributes and more than 1000 mappings. The performance is slow, depending on the lineage or search. This is supposed to be fixed in the later versions, but we haven't upgraded yet. The integration with various metadata sources, including erwin Data Modeler, isn't smooth in the current version. It took some experimentation to get things working. We hope this is improved in the newer version. The initial version we used felt awkward because Erwin implemented features from other companies into their offering.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"The GUI interface is nice and easy to use."
"Data Intelligence allows us to automate multiple tasks we had previously done manually, such as restructuring the metadata for our purposes, setting up ETL flows, and defining the data tables we create. It also enables us to standardize our approach and our technical processes."
"The biggest impact for us is that erwin generates DDL extremely quickly. We're able to pull in metadata, map it to a target, generate DDL to create the tables, and generate SSIS packages. Previously, especially going back 10 to 15 years ago, hundreds of hours had to be spent to manually perform these tasks. This solution completely automates it and gets it 90% done. We can then pass it off to a developer to create the items in SSIS."
"We use the codeset mapping quite a bit to match value pairs to use within the conversion as well. Those value pair mappings come in quite handy and are utilized quite extensively. They then feed into the automation of the source data extraction, like the source data mapping of the source data extraction, the code development, forward engineering using the ODI connector for the forward automation."
"Overall, DI's data cataloging, data literacy, and automation have helped our decision-makers because when a source wants to change something, we immediately know what the impact is going to be downstream."
"Data Intelligence has provided more profound insights into legacy data movements, lineages, and definitions in the short term. We have linked three critical layers of data, providing us with an end-to-end lineage at the column level."
"The solution saves time in data discovery and understanding our entire organization's data."
"The biggest benefit with erwin DI is that I have a single source of truth that I can send anybody to. If anybody doesn't know the answer we can go back to it. Just having a central location of business rules is good."
"It is a central place for everybody to start any ETL data pipeline builds. This tool is being heavily used, plus it's heavily integrated with all the ETL data pipeline design and build processes. Nobody can bypass these processes and do something without going through this tool."
 

Cons

"There was an issue with the incremental aggregation not working as indicated."
"The product was not able to meet our 10 second refresh requirements."
"The organization of the icons is not saved across users."
"We chose to implement on an Oracle Database because we also had the erwin Data Modeler and Web Portal products in-house, which have been set up on Oracle Databases for many years. Sometimes the Oracle Database installation has caused some hiccups that wouldn't necessarily have been caused if we had used SQL Server."
"We still need another layer of data quality assessments on the source to see if it is sending us the wrong data or if there are some issues with the source data. For those things, we need a rule-based data quality assessment or scoring where we can assess tools or other technology stacks. We need to be able to leverage where the business comes in, defining some business rules and have the ability to execute those rules, then score the data quality of all those attributes. Data quality is definitely not what we are leveraging from this tool, as of today."
"The data quality assessment requires third-party components and a separate license."
"There was a huge learning curve, and I'd been in software development for most of my career. The application itself, and how it runs menus and screens when you can modify and code, is complex. I have found that kind of cumbersome."
"Another area where it can improve is by having BB-Graph-type databases where relationship discovery and relationship identification are much easier."
"There is room for improvement with the data cataloging capability. Right now, there is a list of a lot of sources that they can catalog, or they can create metadata upon, but if they can add more then that would be a good plus for this tool."
"The versioning can sometimes be confusing because we use the publishing feature for the mapping. Technical analysts sometimes have two versions, and they should know that the public version is the correct one."
"Really huge datasets, where the logical names or the lexicons weren't groomed or maintained well, were the only area where it really had room for improvement. A huge data set would cause erwin to crash. If there were half a million or 1 million tables, erwin would hang."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available
"erwin is cheaper than other solutions and this should appeal to other buyers. It has a good price tag."
"We operate on a yearly subscription and because it is an enterprise license we only have one. It is not dependent on the number of users."
"The solution is aggressively priced."
"erwin's pricing was cheaper than its competitors."
"erwin was at a good price. The federal government wouldn't buy something if the pricing wasn't good."
"The licensing cost was very affordable at the time of purchase. It has since been taken over by erwin, then Quest. The tool has gotten a bit more costly, but they are adding more features very quickly."
"Smart Data Connectors have some costs, and then there are user-based licenses. We spend roughly $150,000 per year on the solution. It is a yearly subscription license that basically includes the cost for Smart Data Connectors and user-based licenses. We have around 30 data stewards who maintain definitions, and then we have five IT users who basically maintain the overall solution. It is not a SaaS kind of operation, and there is an infrastructure cost to host this solution, which is our regular AWS hosting cost."
"The licensing cost is around $7,000 for user. This is an estimation."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Data Governance solutions are best for your needs.
849,190 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
19%
Manufacturing Company
12%
Computer Software Company
11%
Healthcare Company
8%
Computer Software Company
22%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Government
9%
Non Profit
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

Ask a question
Earn 20 points
What do you like most about erwin Data Intelligence by Quest?
The data mapping manager is the most valuable feature.
What needs improvement with erwin Data Intelligence by Quest?
The data quality assessment requires third-party components and a separate license. I would like to have better integration around the data quality. I would appreciate the inclusion of a non-struct...
 

Also Known As

AtScale, AtScale Intelligence Platform
erwin DG, erwin Data Governance
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Rakuten, TD Bank, Aetna, Glaxo-Smith Kline, Biogen, Toyota, Tyson
Oracle, Infosys, GSK, Toyota Motor Sales, HSBC
Find out what your peers are saying about Microsoft, Informatica, Collibra and others in Data Governance. Updated: April 2025.
849,190 professionals have used our research since 2012.