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.
"It is a scalable solution...The technical support team is fine."
"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 product allows us to reuse entities and attributes."
"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."
"It supports a wide variety of databases, including the latest ones. We have chosen to go for a cloud-based database, and it supports that, which is very useful."
"The fitting model is very intuitive."
"The most valuable features are the ability to reverse engineer and do model comparison. With the reverse engineering, I can understand the databases from third-party products. With the model comparison, I can track the differences between two versions of the same database."
"The product lets us import different types of models from various databases."
"A good designation feature."
"The primary functionality revolves around the creation of flow diagrams and diverse Building Information Modeling (BIM) using contemporary and pre-established notations. In my perspective, these ready-made notations prove highly beneficial. Despite being a compact tool, it is effective for tasks such as drawing organizational charts, making it a straightforward and uncomplicated tool."
"I like the way you can hypertext across tabs so you can actually create an interactive that you can export as a website. You can also extend it to a monitoring tool if you really wanted to."
"The solution is easy to scale."
"The product provides a lot of flexibility in writing graphs and customizing them."
"If you are a knowledgeable individual, the initial setup isn't too difficult."
"It's my understanding that the initial setup is straightforward."
"Just the fact that a majority of the industry uses it, and you've got third-party templates that were created."
"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."
"erwin generally fails to successfully reverse engineer our Oracle Databases into erwin data models. The way that they are engineered on our side, the syntax is correct from an Oracle perspective, but it seems to be very difficult for erwin to interpret. What I end up doing is using Oracle Data Modeler to reverse engineer into the Oracle data model, then forward engineer the DDL into an Oracle syntax, and importing that DDL into erwin in order to successfully bring in most of the information from our physical data models. That is a bit of a challenge."
"erwin is not as robust as a data warehousing project I've been on in the past."
"In terms of new features, it would be great to have a cloud base. We should be able to put it on the cloud for better collaboration and data models sharing."
"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."
"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."
"In terms of improvements, support could have been better in terms of installation, especially of workgroups. We struggled quite a bit to get it up and running. Collaboration could have been better from an installation perspective, but it is trivial as compared to what we use it for. Other than that, I don't have much feedback. It works pretty well, and the fact that we've been using it for more than a decade shows that it is quite solid."
"It can be complex. If you don't know a little bit about it, it can get really confusing."
"If you look at ARIS, for example, or Signavio, the flowchart combines all the details and with the click of a button I can create a process manager. That would be something that Visio could add. It would cut my workload in half."
"It requires a lot of skill to get into it."
"Portability from Visio to PowerPoint and vice versa could be simplified."
"The solution's flexibility can be perceived as both a strength and a weakness."
"I would like to see the project planning element improved, although it won't happen because Microsoft deliberately made it worse."
"The big downside to Visio is that it's very difficult to push the design through to Power Automate, to become a workflow that you can use."
"System architecture could be improved."
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.
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