UNICOM System Architect vs erwin Data Modeler by Quest comparison

erwin by Quest and Unicom Systems are both solutions in the Enterprise Architecture Management category. erwin by Quest is ranked #3 with an average rating of 8.2, while Unicom Systems is ranked #26. erwin by Quest holds a 11.2% mindshare in AM, compared to Unicom Systems’s 0.5% mindshare. Additionally, 95% of erwin by Quest users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 50% of Unicom Systems users who would recommend it.

erwin Data Modeler by Quest

Read 39 erwin Data Modeler by Quest reviews

4,367 Views
2,377 Comparison Views

95% willing to recommend

UNICOM System Architect

Read 2 UNICOM System Architect reviews

288 Views
132 Comparison Views

50% willing to recommend

erwin Data Modeler by Quest

UNICOM System Architect

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Nov 3, 2024

UNICOM System Architect and erwin Data Modeler by Quest are key players in enterprise architecture and data modeling. While UNICOM has advantages in pricing and support, erwin is favored for its comprehensive feature set, indicating a justified investment.

Features: UNICOM System Architect offers comprehensive enterprise architecture modeling, visualization capabilities supporting complex frameworks, and adaptive integration. erwin Data Modeler by Quest provides strong data modeling, metadata management, and collaboration functionalities, supporting complex database environments efficiently.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: UNICOM System Architect provides a flexible deployment model with satisfactory customer support, allowing for adaptive integration. erwin Data Modeler by Quest delivers an intuitive deployment process and superior customer service for smooth transitions, emphasizing its user-friendly setup.

Pricing and ROI: UNICOM System Architect is known for a lower initial setup cost and satisfactory ROI, thanks to efficient licensing options. erwin Data Modeler by Quest, despite a higher potential cost, offers better ROI through extensive scalability and sophisticated functionalities, highlighting its long-term value.

To learn more, read our detailed UNICOM System Architect vs. erwin Data Modeler by Quest Report (Updated: January 2025).

Buyer's Guide

UNICOM System Architect vs. erwin Data Modeler by Quest

January 2025

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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

erwin Data Modeler by Quest

Ranking in Enterprise Architecture Management

3rd

Average Rating

8.6

Reviews Sentiment

7.2

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Business Process Design (9th)

UNICOM System Architect

Ranking in Enterprise Architecture Management

26th

Average Rating

6.0

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of February 2025, in the Enterprise Architecture Management category, the mindshare of erwin Data Modeler by Quest is 11.2%, up from 9.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of UNICOM System Architect is 0.5%, down from 0.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Enterprise Architecture Management

Featured Reviews

JorgeSanz

Data Governance Senior Advisor at Abu Dhabi National Oil Company

Streamline data modeling and automate network changes for increased efficiency

The initial setup depends on the tool if you are using the data model environment. Stopping the server could be complex and require strong expertise. If you have everything set up and configured, Erwin is straightforward. You can deploy it in a few hours. In our case, it took a couple of months to address internal conditions, assign machines, and set up everything for the services. I rate the initial setup a six out of ten, where one is difficult and ten is easy.

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reviewer1261290

Project Manager at a government with 10,001+ employees

Useful for creating build-outs and architecture views, but requires a publisher add-on for some detailed reports

I don't use the tool or know a lot. It is going to have some shortcomings. When it comes down to publishing, we just found out this week that they actually have a publisher add-on. So, what we were trying to publish was not giving a detailed report about the architecture, views, etc. I just wish they had sent these to UNICOM and contacted them about add-on features for the publishing part of the tool.

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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"It is a scalable solution...The technical support team is fine."

"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."

"Quest can create conceptual and physical data models to facilitate effective communication between business and IT. It can also integrate expertise from various engineering and database systems within your organization to enhance data management and administration."

"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."

"One of the best aspects of the tool is its reverse engineering capability."

"We can create mappings in erwin and possibly data dictionaries."

"Being able to point it to a database and then pull the metadata is a valuable feature. Another valuable feature is being able to rearrange the model so that we can display it to users. We are able to divide the information into subject areas, and we can divide the data landscape into smaller chunks, which makes it easier to understand. If you had 14 subject areas, 1,000 entities, and 6,000 columns, you can't quite understand it all at once. So, being able to have the same underlying model but only display portions of it at a time is extremely useful."

"I have worked with erwin Data Modeler for quite some time and familiarity is its most valuable feature."

More erwin Data Modeler by Quest pros

"It is useful for creating build-outs and architecture views and for publishing reports and stuff like that for different programs."

"It has good end-to-end metamodel interrelationships."

Cons

"It is not a very stable solution. I rate the stability five out of ten."

"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."

"I would like to have more data sources from other, different vendors. In recent years, the vendor has reduced the number of data sources, and I would like to have more data sources for every brand. For example, with Oracle, I would like to have compatibility for many versions, including old ones, not just the most recent."

"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 would like the solution to be less rigid in terms of its theory."

"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."

"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."

"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."

More erwin Data Modeler by Quest cons

"I don't use the tool or know a lot. It is going to have some shortcomings. When it comes down to publishing, we just found out this week that they actually have a publisher add-on. So, what we were trying to publish was not giving a detailed report about the architecture, views, etc. I just wish they had sent these to UNICOM and contacted them about add-on features for the publishing part of the tool."

"They need to add reports that show the enterprise architecture perspectives, and the dashboards should be comfortable for the senior enterprise architects so that they can view the complete landscape."

Pricing and Cost Advice

"There is either a one-year or three-year license. It is not a pay-as-you-go license like a SaaS solution. It’s more of a traditional licensing. They are a little bit on the pricier side."

"An issue right now would be that erwin doesn't have a freely available browser (that I am aware of) for people who are not data modelers or data engineers that a consumer could use to look at the data models and play with it. This would not be to make any changes, but just to visually look at what exists. There are other products out there which do have end user browsers available and allow them to access data models via the data modeling tool."

"There are no costs in addition to the standard licensing fees."

"Though the solution is not cheap, it's worth the money."

"I wish it wasn't so expensive. I would love to personally buy a copy of my own and have it at home, because the next job that I'm looking at is probably project management and I might not have access to the tool. I would like to keep my ability to use the tool. Therefore, they should probably have a pricing for people like me who want to just use the solution as an independent consultant, trying to get started. $3,000 is a big hit."

"There are two license options and the pricing is reasonable."

"I don't specifically know what we're paying now. About three years ago, in another organization, I have this memory of 6,000 AUD a seat or something like that, but I am not sure. In the mid-2000s, it was something like 1,200 AUD a seat. I get the impression that there was a price jump when it was spun off from CA as a separate company, which is understandable, but it could sometimes be a barrier in some organizations picking it up. I haven't talked to erwin people yet, but I'm going to suggest to them that they could perhaps think of having an entry-level product that is priced a bit lower, and then, you can buy the extra suite."

"erwin is expensive compared to other solutions. We are paying almost $6,000 per seat a month."

More erwin Data Modeler by Quest pricing and cost advice

"I don't remember the price. It is a different cost for just buying it, and then you have a maintenance cost, which you need to renew every year."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

19%

Manufacturing Company

10%

Government

Computer Software Company

Government

17%

Financial Services Firm

16%

Computer Software Company

14%

University

12%

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

No data available

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about erwin Data Modeler by Quest?

Forward engineering, DDL generation, reverse engineering, and reporting are the most valuable features of the solution.

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What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for erwin Data Modeler by Quest?

The product is expensive. I rate the product’s pricing a nine out of ten, where one is cheap and ten is expensive.

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What needs improvement with erwin Data Modeler by Quest?

As a documenting tool, it's solid, though its reporting could be more robust. The reporting mechanisms could be more intuitive regarding report creation. It can generate reports in CSV files, displ...

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Enterprise Architecture Management

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Also Known As

erwin DM

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Overview

erwin pioneered data modeling, and erwin Data Modeler (erwin DM) remains trusted, award-winning software for data modeling and database design, automating complex and time-consuming tasks. Use it to discover and document any data from anywhere for consistency, clarity and artifact reuse across large-scale data integration, master data management, metadata management, Big Data, business intelligence and analytics initiatives – all while supporting data governance and intelligence efforts.

erwin by Quest

Information not available

Unicom Systems

Sample Customers

Premera, America Honda Motors, Aetna, Kaiser Permanente, Dental Dental Cali, Cigna, Staples

Apple, Facebook, Google, HSBC, PayPal

Buyer's Guide

UNICOM System Architect vs. erwin Data Modeler by Quest

January 2025

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