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erwin Data Modeler pros and cons

Vendor: Quest Software

4.3 out of 5

44 reviews
95% willing to recommend

Pros & Cons summary

Erwin Data Modeler enhances data tracing with lineage and reverse engineering, supporting collaboration and streamlining database development via forward and reverse engineering scripts. It is scalable, accommodating diverse databases, including cloud options, although stability issues occur with large models. Import/export across systems and collaboration aid data integration, despite challenges with Oracle reverse engineering and limited local support in China. Reporting and visualization features need more user-friendly automation for improved usability.

Buyer's Guide

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Prominent pros & cons

PROS

Erwin Data Modeler provides valuable data lineage and reverse engineering capabilities, enhancing data tracing and mapping across systems.

The ability to generate forward and reverse engineering scripts, including DDL, significantly reduces development time and effort, especially for data integration and database implementation.

It supports collaboration across teams and enables creating, comparing, and synchronizing data models, ensuring consistency and accuracy in database management.

The tool allows for easy export and import of tables and models from various databases, facilitating data management and integration across different environments.

Erwin Data Modeler offers scalability and supports a wide variety of databases, including newer cloud-based options, making it suitable for diverse organizational needs.

CONS

Lack of local support in China and limited cloud application capabilities.

Evolving needs in the big data arena; more support for current databases and additional NoSQL platforms required.

Stability issues and performance problems with large data models, causing slow response times and glitches.

Challenges with reverse engineering in Oracle databases, and complexity with managing updated DDL scripts.

Room for improvement in reporting and visualization features with more automated and user-friendly options desired.

erwin Data Modeler Pros review quotes

reviewer1270548

VP Enterprise Data Architecture at a financial services firm with 5,001-10,000 employees

Jan 22, 2020

The most valuable feature is the physical or visual representation of the database, showing the tables, the columns, the foreign keys, and the ability to generate DDL, so you can physically implement databases.

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SA

Sr. Manager, Data Governance at a insurance company with 501-1,000 employees

Jan 27, 2020

When you're getting down to the database level, where you're building a design and you're creating DDL out of it, or you're going in the other direction where you're reaching into system catalogs and bringing things back, that starts to really require specialization. Visio isn't going to reverse-engineer that for you. Those features in erwin are valuable.

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RH

EDW Architect/ Data Modeler at Royal Bank of Canada

Feb 6, 2020

The solution’s code generation ensures accurate engineering of data sources, as there is no development time. Code doesn't even have to be reviewed. We have been using this solution for so long and all the code which has been generated is accurate with the requirements. Once we generate the DDLs out of the erwin tools, the development team does a quick review of the script line by line. They will just be running the script on the database and looking into other requirements, such as the index. So, there is less effort from development side to create tables or build a database.

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erwin Data Modeler

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GN

Enterprise Data Architect at a energy/utilities company with 1,001-5,000 employees

Feb 13, 2020

It's important to create standard templates — Erwin is good at that — and you can customize them. You can create a standard template so that your models have the same look and feel. And then, anyone using the tool is using the same font and the same general layout. erwin's very good at helping enforce that.

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GH

Technology Manager at a pharma/biotech company with 10,001+ employees

Mar 22, 2020

The most valuable features are being able to visualize the data in the diagrams and transform those diagrams into physical database deployments. These features help, specifically, to integrate the data. When the source data is accumulated and modeled, the target model is in erwin and it helps resolve the data integration patterns that are required to map the data to accommodate a model.

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DN

Damian Niedzielski

Data Modeler at a logistics company with 10,001+ employees

Apr 16, 2020

We use the Forward and Reverse Engineering tools to help us speed things up and create things that would have to be done otherwise by hand. E.g., getting a database into a data model format or vice versa.

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reviewer1376661

Sr. Data Engineer at a healthcare company with 10,001+ employees

Aug 4, 2020

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.

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reviewer1376640

Technical Consultant at a insurance company with 1,001-5,000 employees

Jul 23, 2020

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.

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TH

Tracy Hautenen Kriel

Architecture Sr. Manager, Data Design & Metadata Mgmt at a insurance company with 10,001+ employees

Dec 1, 2020

The visual data models for helping to overcome data source complexity and enabling understanding and collaboration around maintenance and usage are excellent. A picture speaks 1,000 words. Seeing a picture that shows you how the data relates to each other helps you better understand what the data is and how to use it. Pairing that information with a dictionary, which has the definitions of the tables and columns or the entities and attributes, ensures that the users understand what the data is so that they can use it best and most successfully.

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BK

Beverly King De Loach

Architecture Manager at CIGNA Corporation

Jul 27, 2020

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.

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erwin Data Modeler Cons review quotes

reviewer1270548

VP Enterprise Data Architecture at a financial services firm with 5,001-10,000 employees

Jan 22, 2020

I would like to see more support for working with the big-data world. There are so many new databases evolving and it's very hard for them to keep up with all of the new technologies. It would be good if they were able to dynamically support big-data platforms, other than Hive and Teradata.

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SA

Sr. Manager, Data Governance at a insurance company with 501-1,000 employees

Jan 27, 2020

One of the things I've been talking to the erwin team about through the years is that every data model should have the ability to be multi-language... When I was working at Honda, it became very difficult to work with the Japanese teams using just one model. You can have two models, one in English and one in Japanese, but that means you have to keep the updates back and forth, and that always increases the risk of something not being updated.

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RH

EDW Architect/ Data Modeler at Royal Bank of Canada

Feb 6, 2020

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.

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erwin Data Modeler

Free Report: erwin Data Modeler Reviews and More

Learn what your peers think about erwin Data Modeler. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: January 2026.

879,672 professionals have used our research since 2012.

GN

Enterprise Data Architect at a energy/utilities company with 1,001-5,000 employees

Feb 13, 2020

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.

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GH

Technology Manager at a pharma/biotech company with 10,001+ employees

Mar 22, 2020

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.

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DN

Damian Niedzielski

Data Modeler at a logistics company with 10,001+ employees

Apr 16, 2020

Complete Compare is set up only to compare properties that are of interest to us, but some of the differences cannot be brought over from one version of the model to another. This is despite the fact that we are clicking to bring objects from one place to another. Therefore, it's hard to tell at times if Complete Compare is working as intended without having to manually go into the details and check everything. If it could be redesigned to a degree where it is easier to use when we bring things over from one site to another and be sure that it's been done correctly, that would be nice to have. We would probably use the tool more often if the Complete Compare were easier to use.

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reviewer1376661

Sr. Data Engineer at a healthcare company with 10,001+ employees

Aug 4, 2020

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.

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reviewer1376640

Technical Consultant at a insurance company with 1,001-5,000 employees

Jul 23, 2020

I find the UI very clunky and very difficult to use. If I add columns to a table the whole workflow could be so much easier. I get frustrated using it. I've tried other tools. I've tried to get off of erwin a few times. I always come back to it because every tool has its own set of problems, and it seems like if I have to pick my poison, I stay with erwin. But so many things that are clunky with it.

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TH

Tracy Hautenen Kriel

Architecture Sr. Manager, Data Design & Metadata Mgmt at a insurance company with 10,001+ employees

Dec 1, 2020

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.

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BK

Beverly King De Loach

Architecture Manager at CIGNA Corporation

Jul 27, 2020

I love the product. I love the ability to get into the code, make it automated, and make it do what I want. I would like to see them put some kind of governance over the ability to make changes to the mart tables with the API, so that instead of just using the modeler's rights to a table -- it has a separate set of rights for API access. That would give us the ability to put governance around API applications. Right now a person with erwin and Excel/VBA has the ability to make changes to models with the API if they also have rights to make changes to the model from erwin. It's a risk.

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Product Categories

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Enterprise Architecture Management

Business Process Design

Data Governance

Popular Comparisons

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Camunda vs erwin Data Modeler

SAP Signavio Process Manager vs erwin Data Modeler

Bizagi vs erwin Data Modeler

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Visio vs erwin Data Modeler

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