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erwin Data Intelligence by Quest pros and cons

4.3 out of 5
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Pros & Cons summary

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Prominent pros & cons

PROS

Erwin Data Intelligence by Quest offers strong automation capabilities, enabling the running of scripts for metadata management and reducing manual tasks significantly.
It serves as a centralized source of truth for data, where business rules and metadata are consolidated, enhancing data governance and ease of access.
The tool provides comprehensive data lineage, revealing the impact of data changes across various departments and improving organizational data understanding.
Erwin Data Intelligence by Quest supports extensive data management and governance across multiple levels, from business terms to physical implementation of databases.
It creates detailed mind maps for visual representation of data relationships, aiding clarity for business teams in navigating complex data structures.

CONS

The SDK needs improvement as there are inconsistencies on the LDK level with deep automation scripts and API calls.
Moving between different applications, despite them being part of the erwin suite, indicates potential architecture improvements.
Metadata ingestion could be streamlined by allowing setup from one location instead of separately for each data asset.
Managing codeset mapping with source to target mapping is clunky due to conflicts that arise, and codeset mappings can become locked.
Handling huge datasets is problematic, as large sets with poorly maintained lexicons can cause erwin to crash.
 

erwin Data Intelligence by Quest Pros review quotes

RD
Jan 29, 2020
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.
TH
Oct 28, 2020
The data management is, obviously, key in understanding where the data is and what the data is. And the governance can be done at multiple levels. You have the governance of the code sets versus the governance of the business terms and the definitions of those business terms. You have the governance of the business data models and how those business data models are driving the physical implementation of the actual databases. And, of course, you have the governance of the mapping to make sure that source-to-target mapping is done and is being shared across the company.
reviewer1578072 - PeerSpot reviewer
May 16, 2021
Being able to capture different business metrics and organize them in different catalogs is most valuable. We can organize these metrics into sales-related metrics, customer-related metrics, supply chain-related metrics, etc.
Learn what your peers think about erwin Data Intelligence by Quest. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: November 2024.
816,406 professionals have used our research since 2012.
reviewer1935849 - PeerSpot reviewer
Aug 10, 2022
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.
MN
Dec 14, 2022
erwin has tremendous capabilities to map right from the business technologies to the endpoint, such as physical entities and physical attributes, from a lineage standpoint.
MT
May 24, 2021
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.
SA
Jan 30, 2020
They have just the most marvelous reports called mind maps, where whatever you are focused on sits in the middle. They have this wonderful graphic spiderweb that spreads out from there where you can see this thing mapped to other logical bits or physical bits and who's the steward of it. It's very cool and available to your business teams through a portal.
reviewer1270386 - PeerSpot reviewer
Jan 22, 2020
The possibility to write automation scripts is the biggest benefit for us. We have several products with metadata and metadata mapping capabilities. The big difference when we were choosing this product was the ability to run automation scripts against metadata and metadata mappings. Right now, we have a very high level of automation based on these automation scripts, so it's really the core feature for us.
JM
Oct 26, 2020
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.
reviewer2230059 - PeerSpot reviewer
Jul 7, 2023
Mind map... is a really good feature because it is very helpful in seeing which column's tables are related. Also, you can flag them with "sensitive data" and other indicators. You can also customize your own features for the mind map. That was another very robust feature.
 

erwin Data Intelligence by Quest Cons review quotes

RD
Jan 29, 2020
The fact that I sometimes have to go in and out of different applications, even though it's all part of the whole erwin suite, perhaps means it could be architected a little bit better. I think they do have some ideas for improvements there.
TH
Oct 28, 2020
The metadata ingestion is very nice because of the ability to automate it. It would be nice to be able to do this ingestion, or set it up, from one place, instead of having to set it up separately for every data asset that is ingested.
reviewer1578072 - PeerSpot reviewer
May 16, 2021
There may be some opportunities for improvement in terms of the user interface to make it a little bit more intuitive. They have made some good progress. Originally, when we started, we were on version 9 or 10. Over the last couple of releases, I've seen some improvements that they have made, but there might be a few other additional areas in UI where they can make some enhancements.
Learn what your peers think about erwin Data Intelligence by Quest. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: November 2024.
816,406 professionals have used our research since 2012.
reviewer1935849 - PeerSpot reviewer
Aug 10, 2022
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.
MN
Dec 14, 2022
Another area where it can improve is by having BB-Graph-type databases where relationship discovery and relationship identification are much easier.
MT
May 24, 2021
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.
SA
Jan 30, 2020
There are a lot of little things like moving between read screens and edit screens. Those little human interface type of programming pieces will need to mature a bit to make it easier to get to where you want to go to put the stuff in.
reviewer1270386 - PeerSpot reviewer
Jan 22, 2020
The SDK behind this entire product needs improvement. The company really should focus more on this because we were finding some inconsistencies on the LDK level. Everything worked fine from the UI perspective, but when we started doing some deep automation scripts going through multiple API calls inside the tool, then only some pieces of it work or it would not return the exact data it was supposed to do.
JM
Oct 26, 2020
One big improvement we would like to see would be the workflow integration of codeset mapping with the erwin source to target mapping. That's a bit clunky for us. The two often seem to be in conflict with one another. Codeset mappings that are used within the source to target mappings are difficult to manage because they get locked.
reviewer2230059 - PeerSpot reviewer
Jul 7, 2023
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.