We performed a comparison between Avolution ABACUS and erwin Data Modeler by Quest 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."There are a lot of different features, but the business/decision-maker feature, visibility, and dashboards are most valuable."
"You can design using a diagram tool installed on your desktop, a key difference from other vendors."
"The product is easy to use and well-structured for the integrations we need it to make."
"If you face new challenges or issues then you can dynamically customize according to the business needs."
"The most valuable feature is that it has a customizable meta-model, which is key."
"The tool's implementation is straightforward as everything is readily available. For instance, setting up a portal is seamless, allowing easy publishing and access to data. However, integrating with other tools like BI, Power BI, or Grafana requires setting up pipelines between them."
"There are plenty of features available such as the ability to test applications for issues and a user-friendly dashboard."
"It's more than just an enterprise architecture tool as it has a lot of nice features, e.g. messaging, simulation, etc."
"I have worked with erwin Data Modeler for quite some time and familiarity is its most valuable feature."
"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."
"We had some data integration projects, where we needed to integrate it for about 100 databases. Doing that manually is crazy; we can't do that. With erwin, it was much easier to identify which tables and columns could be used for the integration. That means a lot in terms of time and effort as well as my image to the customer, because they can see that we are providing value in a very short time."
"The solution is good for organizing the data and the scripting part is very powerful. It's easy to create technical scripts for models."
"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."
"Any tool will do diagramming but I think the ability to put the stuff up in a graphical fashion, then think about it, and keep things consistent is what's valuable about it. It's too easy when you're using other methods to not have naming consistent standards and column consistent definitions, et cetera."
"We find that its ability to generate database code from a model for a wide array of data sources cuts development time. The ability to create one model in your design phase and then have it generate DDL code for Oracle or Teradata, or whichever environment you need is really nice. It's not only nice but it also saves man-hours of time. You would have to take your design and just type in manually. It has to take days off out of the work."
"There is absolutely no problem with the stability."
"Having more control over page size is lacking in this product. Print utilization also needs to be improved."
"The most valuable features are the catalog and the diagram."
"The usability of the tool is an area with shortcomings that need improvement."
"It is vastly scalable but you can't run it on a Mac or Linux so it has limitations."
"Avolution ABACUS has the drawback of needing data filtering at the development level, unlike some tools that offer filtering at deployment. Two areas where Avolution ABACUS could be improved are regional support and flexibility in model selection. Sometimes, it's challenging to access support or updates in certain regions, which can slow down progress. Additionally, it would be beneficial if the tool allowed more flexibility in selecting multiple models within a single unit."
"If they want to expand in the European market then they are going to have to improve their technical support."
"They should take more initiative to implement things that competing products have already come out with."
"Their local presence in the Middle East could be scaled more, particularly in customer service. It would be good if they'd also have mobile dashboards for executive management out of the box."
"I would like the solution to be less rigid in terms of its theory."
"The erwin ETL functionality has room for improvement when it comes to mapping databases with a classic entity-relationship model to a data warehouse model."
"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."
"It does not have a cloud application."
"I would like to see improved reporting and, potentially, dashboards built on top of that. Right now, it's a little manual. More automated reporting and dashboard views would help because currently you have to push things out to a spreadsheet, or to HTML, and there aren't many other options that I know of. I would like to be able to produce graphs and additional things right in the tool, instead of having to export the data somewhere else."
"I would like the solution to be more user-friendly to deploy."
"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."
"erwin is not as robust as a data warehousing project I've been on in the past."
Avolution ABACUS is ranked 8th in Enterprise Architecture Management with 14 reviews while erwin Data Modeler by Quest is ranked 3rd in Enterprise Architecture Management with 37 reviews. Avolution ABACUS is rated 8.0, while erwin Data Modeler by Quest is rated 8.6. The top reviewer of Avolution ABACUS writes " An out of the box tool that creates reports on the fly that can help your client make better decisions". On the other hand, 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". Avolution ABACUS is most compared with Sparx Systems Enterprise Architect, LeanIX, MEGA HOPEX, Visio and Alfabet Enterprise Architecture Management, whereas erwin Data Modeler by Quest is most compared with SAP PowerDesigner, IDERA ER/Studio, Lucidchart, Visio and erwin Evolve by Quest. See our Avolution ABACUS vs. erwin Data Modeler by Quest report.
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