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SAP Information Steward vs SAP PowerDesigner comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Mar 3, 2025

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

SAP Information Steward
Ranking in Metadata Management
6th
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
9
Ranking in other categories
Data Quality (9th)
SAP PowerDesigner
Ranking in Metadata Management
4th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.6
Number of Reviews
35
Ranking in other categories
Enterprise Architecture Management (5th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2025, in the Metadata Management category, the mindshare of SAP Information Steward is 3.8%, up from 3.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SAP PowerDesigner is 4.2%, up from 3.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Metadata Management
 

Featured Reviews

FranciscoSantos - PeerSpot reviewer
Provides accurate data that is validated against a personalized reference tool
For most SAP customers, Information Steward is enough because it is able to build quality data rules to detect issues in the source systems like SAP HANA, Business Warehouse, or other systems. A business user can first organize their data into several data domains. For example, procurement, human resources, and logistics setup. The domains can build data quality dimensions where you can describe the kind of rule that you are going to use. The user then can immediately see if something is wrong with their data using traffic lights. Another great feature of SAP Information Steward is the accuracy that the content is followed by validating against the reference tool. With the solution, you are creating data quality dimensions. Within these dimensions, you are creating business data quality rules that are looking for specific fields. From these rules, you can create a scorecard. The scorecard will highlight the percentage of good data and ensure the user can feel confident that the data is accurate within predetermined limits. SAP tables have field names that are very cryptic, making them hard to understand the meaning of the fields. Metapedia helps describe these fields in business terms.
JorgeSanz - PeerSpot reviewer
Effective in terms of validating everything, but sometimes they don't allow us some flexibility and GUI could improve
I would recommend SAP PowerDesigner to others for data architecture management. It provides all the functionalities in terms of data modeling, so it's also a good tool for that. I see trends in terms of data classification, but I don't see this tool with the intelligence to do that automatically. So, like, with artificial intelligence. Overall, I would rate the solution a six out of ten because there are too many validations. Also, I found some gaps in terms of relationships; they didn't appear when you do reverse engineering. Also, this tool lacks artificial intelligence that should be very good in terms of automatically identifying the classification of elements and maybe also to incorporate some artificial intelligence in providing descriptions for each data element included in the solution.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Setup is straightforward."
"Ability to collect information, monitor user access and to plan storage capacity."
"Data insight is the most valuable feature."
"Initial setup was straightforward."
"The data profiling was excellent, as was the ease of generating the dashboards."
"The scorecard will highlight the percentage of good data and ensure the user can feel confident that the data is accurate within predetermined limits."
"The solution is very fast."
"The Data Cleansing and the scorecard dashboard are very valuable. Additionally, the financial aspect of SAP Information Steward is very good. When a rule is incorrect then it will show how much is it costing the business. These features are very valuable."
"Has a specific template that's very helpful for importing metadata."
"I like the property sheet capability and the user-defined attributes that you can set up."
"It offers a lot of features in one solution. You would have to get multiple other products to bundle together all of the capabilities that you get in just this product."
"I mostly work on the conceptual and logical side of things, and I enjoy how easy it is to use."
"I do a data-centric design, so for me, the data analysis and design tools are the most valuable features."
"SAP PowerDesigner is fairly stable."
"The most valuable features of the solution are it's built very well, easy to use, and simple to describe freely what is needed in logical and physical data models."
"Provides the flexibility to create logical and conceptual data models."
 

Cons

"SAP Information Steward could be improved by offering a cloud version of the product."
"The solution could improve by incorporating other applications, such as Power BI to show more visualization. More interaction with other solutions would be a good benefit."
"Needs to be more powerful on rules."
"We'd like to see some manipulation techniques included in SAP Information Steward."
"The user experience of metapedia could be improved."
"Granularity could be reduced from an application level to the object level."
"Performance could be improved."
"The support team is not very responsive."
"Technical support needs improvement."
"The portal of SAP PowerDesigner could be better. The tool also needs more features and integration with other products, such as Collibra. It would be interesting for SAP PowerDesigner to have more integration."
"Connectivity can be improved because it's not very good."
"I have found the solution not easy to use. When publishing you have to download the HTML, make adjustments against the updated HTML, convert it to HTML, then finally paste the HTML. There is not an on-the-fly function available to bypass the step-by-step converting process that other solutions have."
"The data governance should be improved, like ER/Studio."
"You have the possibility to complete a connection for abbreviations if you are creating columns or names of the tables. In the Citrix environment, this has been lagging to the point where the PowerDesigner was not usable."
"There are many areas of this solution that needs to be changed."
"This product lacks artificial intelligence that should be very good in terms of automatically identifying the classification of elements."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"A bit pricey, and better tools are available for a lower price."
"Smaller-sized organizations may not be able to invest in SAP Information Steward because of the cost."
"I do not know if there were additional costs beyond the standard licensing fees."
"SAP Information Steward is an expensive solution compared to others."
"The price of the solution is too expensive. When we asked for certain licenses in different countries it was unattainable."
"SAP PowerDesigner is cheaper than eriwin."
"The price of the solution is low."
"The pricing varies based on functionality and users."
"I bought the software outright and do not pay a licensing fee."
"I would like SAP to prove free licenses to professionals that are using the solution. The free version is limited."
"Regarding costs, SAP PowerDesigner is pricey, as I've heard from my team manager, which is why the company has been thinking of bringing another solution on board."
"The ROI has been 43%."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Manufacturing Company
21%
Financial Services Firm
16%
Government
13%
Computer Software Company
9%
Financial Services Firm
26%
Government
12%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Computer Software Company
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

Ask a question
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What do you like most about SAP PowerDesigner?
It allows us to have proper documentation in terms of the databases.
What needs improvement with SAP PowerDesigner?
Based on my experience with SAP PowerDesigner, I'd like to see improvements in the DMM feature. Even if I have an ETL tool, I'd like the DMM options to directly connect to ETL tool repositories lik...
 

Also Known As

Information Steward, SAP Data Insight
Sybase PowerDesigner
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

American Water, Graphic Packaging International, OSRAM Licht AG, Maxim Integrated
Medtronic, Cirque du Soleil, Antarc, B&G Manufacturing, EarlySense, eBay, Ferrero, James Austin Company, Lenovo, Sagem, RAK Ceramics, Vodafone
Find out what your peers are saying about SAP Information Steward vs. SAP PowerDesigner and other solutions. Updated: March 2025.
845,040 professionals have used our research since 2012.