SAP PowerDesigner Reviews

I have been creating physical, logical models for data warehousing for a major bank in the Czech Republic. We have been converting these physical models into external files, generating the DDLs for objects and then deploying objects into those environments. We have 20 users in our business who use this solution but there are additional users across various branches of the bank. 

The most useful feature has been the detailed possibility to model almost anything regarding physical databases. The main goal was to create a data model for financial services in Teradata including a column description, primary case indexes and object relations. 

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. Various patches to fix this have not worked. Ultimately, we have abandoned PowerDesigner on Citrix. 

After working with SAP to resolve this, we found that this could be an issue with VPNs or with a firewall inside a bank institution. We haven't concluded on this for certain but definitely need an improvement when using PowerDesigner on the Citrix Server. 

In a future release, we would like to have the ability to improve the visibility of changes when doing check-ins. I have been working on a model for a few days and in those few days the repository got updated by up to 20 people. We would like to have a list of changes, the name of the user which created a change, or the login of the user who created this change in the change book. This would save us a lot of time. 

I have been using this solution for three years. 

This solution is stable but only on local devices. I have had some issues with the Citrix Server. For example, the solution has worked well when we have had users on holiday and when not running at full capacity. However, when our full operation is running, PowerDesigner does not perform well. 

This is a scalable solution. There is a lot of possibility to create many models and scale its use. 

At some point, we had an issue with the abbreviation file and we couldn't solve it on our side. We had to connect to the SAP user support and they resolved the issue for us in half a day. Overall, the support we received was really good. 

The initial setup is straightforward now but initially took some time to get used to. I've been using it as a user, not as an administrator. We connected to a repository and the name and user login was automatically remembered so it took about one minute.

At one point, we observed an error when two users have been doing check-ins of this model at the same time.

This solution offers good documentation and some cool usage types. I would rate this solution an eight out of ten because learning how to use this solution is easy. However, there have been some difficulties, especially with visibility of changes. I haven't been using other modeling tools so it makes it challenging to compare this solution to others.

I used SAP PowerDesigner as a tool for document folder flow charts and other features.

SAP PowerDesigner is helpful because you can create any type of document.

The most valuable features of SAP PowerDesigner are the creation the flow charts and folders. It is a powerful tool.

SAP PowerDesigner can improve the ease of use. It is not the best tool on the market because it is tough to navigate and use. A beginner would not be able to use it well, it requires some experience. If the solution was more user-friendly it would be able to be used by more audiences. I do not think many people are aware of this solution and they should use it.

In a future release, more features should be added. Other solutions have more features.

I have been using SAP PowerDesigner for approximately two years.

I rate the stability of SAP PowerDesigner a seven out of ten.

I rate the scalability of SAP PowerDesigner a six out of ten.

We have approximately 200 to 300 in the company but not everyone uses it. We will increase usage depending on the company's requirements.

The support from SAP PowerDesigner is great.

I rate the support from SAP PowerDesigner an eight out of ten.

Positive

I did not use other solutions similar to SAP PowerDesigner.

The initial setup of SAP PowerDesigner requires some training before they can work on it. It would be beneficial for those who want to work with the took to take a one month or 20-day training course.

The price of the solution is low. 

I rate the price of SAP PowerDesigner an eight out of ten.

I have not evaluated other solutions before using them. I use whatever the client specifies.

We use 10 to 20 experienced people for the maintenance of the solution. However, the amount of people needed depends on what needs to be worked on. We have other teams that work on the tool, such as developers.

My advice to others is they should try out the solution, it's a good tool. This solution is priced low and if it works for their use case then it is better than paying for a more expensive solution. If your requirements are too high, you can't expect this tool to meet all of your needs, it does not have all the features. You have to go for other options if your requirement needs more features.

I rate SAP PowerDesigner a seven out of ten.

SAP PowerDesigner is an excellent tool that does what I need it to do. What I like most about it is that it's stable, fast, and easy to understand.

I also found the SAP PowerDesigner repository very good. The tool is flexible, too.

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.

SAP PowerDesigner is a stable tool, so it's an eight out of ten.

SAP PowerDesigner is a nine, scalability-wise.

I used ER/Studio before using SAP PowerDesigner.

The initial setup for SAP PowerDesigner is difficult, so it's a six out of ten for me.

Deploying SAP PowerDesigner took eight to sixteen hours.

You need to be a database administrator to deploy SAP PowerDesigner because you need to configure the database and repository. For example, you need to be a Windows administrator to do some network configurations. Three people would be enough to install the SAP PowerDesigner, and then two people simultaneously for DA and Windows administration.

We deployed SAP PowerDesigner in-house.

When you purchase the license for SAP PowerDesigner, you have to buy one year of support. The tool is worth the money.

I work with both SAP PowerDesigner and ER/Studio.

I'm a user of SAP PowerDesigner, but in the past, I've worked for an SAP partner.

I'm working with the latest version of the solution.

I'm a personal user and not a corporate user of the tool, so I have no plans to increase the usage of SAP PowerDesigner.

I advise anyone planning to use the tool to undergo training first. SAP PowerDesigner is not challenging to use as long as you do the training for at least one week, which helps you understand how to use the tool better and all its features.

My rating for SAP PowerDesigner is eight out of ten because it's a great tool. It's stable. You only need to understand one aspect to understand all its features. My clients and I find SAP PowerDesigner great to use.

I mainly use it to create application maps and to connect other applications to IOS platforms. Usually, we use PowerDesigner in order to study the impact of modifying columns and the cut-offs in order to deploy a new data model. I also use it to handle change requests on IS, for example, pushing data models or applying the follow-up on changes done directly on other IOS.

I think that the user experience could use a lot of improvement. 

It would also be good to have a connection with CMDB. In particular, the gap analysis. Usually, when we work on a project, on enterprise architect tools, we start with a paper version and then connect the CMDB. PowerDesigner cannot analyze the gap between reality and the theoretical schema we build.

I have been using SAP PowerDesigner for about four to five years.

It is quite stable. The tool is widely used among big companies here in France and North Africa. It has evolved through the years. When it comes to stability, I would give it a ten out of ten.

It can handle everything. It can reproduce all data models, all connections, all APIs, and so on. I would give it a nine out of ten. 

So far, I have not had any need to contact SAP's technical support. 

I would say that the Linux and MEGA are intuitive, but not complete. Linux cannot track down the data model inside the databases, but it's very intuitive and user-friendly. So PowerDesigner is complete, but it's for experts and cannot be used by junior teams.

The onboarding of the solution is very difficult when we're creating a project from scratch. Even with the new version of the design, it's very difficult to create a new project and start building blocks around it. It is a very efficient tool once the first scheme is created, the first version. Then we create the business view, then the platform view, then the application view, but what could use improvement is the user experience. We cannot start without a very long tutorial, and I would say it's not very user-friendly.

The licensing model is quite expensive. It costs approximately one hundred thousand euros to initially set it up.

I would rate PowerDesigner an eight out of ten.

I was working with Bosch, where I was part of the enterprise data modelling team, and we used SAP PowerDesigner as a data modelling tool. We mainly concentrated on the manufacturing domain, so we followed the data modelling approach using Data Vault 2.0. So the organization told us to use SAP PowerDesigner as a data modelling tool. There are competitors for SAP PowerDesigner tools like Urban and many more, but our organization decided on SAP PowerDesigner. With this tool, a framework was designed by one of the organizations in Germany, and Bosch partnered with them to generate scripts automatically. SAP PowerDesigner also provides the flexibility to create logical and conceptual data models. As a team, we were mainly focused on creating physical data models using SAP PowerDesigner.

Once you create physical data models, you can check out the DDL scripts and implement them on your Oracle databases. We used Oracle databases, but SAP PowerDesigner supports a lot of databases.

It is hard for a new person to learn how to use SAP PowerDesigner, but once they understand and practice, it's pretty simple to use SAP PowerDesigner, and it's easy to take out the DDL scripts.

The user interface could be more user-friendly. We have not worked with other models, but the user interaction or the visualization of the tool should be improved because it looks like an old tool, even though it provides good features. A visualization feature would attract users and make it easier to use.

The automation could be improved because it does not provide the framework or automation but provides data modelling capability. So you have to do it on your own or get a third-party contractor to develop the automation. For us, a company integrated with Bosch and generated a stable framework. Other tools provide automation capability available on cloud.

There was a pain point when we downloaded, configured and installed the software in our local systems. So we thought to put this particular software somewhere in a central system where we can directly access using Citrix workspace because when you install this in your local systems, there is a probability that you will not be able to check in your developments to the central repository.

Organizations that are using SAP PowerDesigner or are thinking of using it may have a big problem if they are moving particular projects to offsite centers or offsite nations. We faced many issues with check-ins of our models where the central server was sitting in Germany. We were located in India, and it was hard or near impossible to check in our models after our developments. We were dependent on our German colleagues to check in our models. We used to send requests via Outlook or Microsoft Teams, and then they would check in the models on our behalf. So we started using Citrix workspace, and there was a central system where SAP PowerDesigner was installed for us. We used it to develop our models and to do the check-ins and checkouts.

We used this solution at my previous employer for about two years.

It is a stable solution, and I rate the stability a seven out of ten. We were initially facing technical issues due to authentication only. Aside from that, there were scenarios where we could not check in because we had to check in our models only using the checked-out models. We could copy our models, create a new copy, and then check in. So there are some technical things that developers should understand because you have to check in the model, but you cannot check in the same model with a different identity.

There will be a different number that the schedule gets generated for each model, and you can rename a new model and try to check in, but it will not. So, developers should know how to use the tool rather than guessing and playing. There were scenarios where other colleagues faced other issues, but I believe most issues we faced were related to authentication. Aside from that, we have not faced any major issues.

It is upon an application, and it is based on licensing. So it is just a tool for developing your data model. So scaling depends on the number of licenses the organization purchases and how many users there are. So if they purchase 20 licenses and 30 people are using them, they will face an issue. I believe about 40 users were using it.

We had no direct connection or contact with the SAP PowerDesigner team. Some of my colleagues have a few connections in Germany, but if we had faced any issues, we would have reached out to my colleagues, and they internally would have reached out to SAP.

I rate the setup a five out of ten. It was difficult to set up because we had to apply a lot of patch files one after the other. In addition, there was an issue with using the SAP PowerDesigner in our local systems and checking in to a central server or a central repository in Germany or some countries. I am unsure if this was an issue with the Bosch team or if other organizations had the same issue. PowerDesigner should work towards fixing this and providing access to the users through Citrix workspace or other version machines.

We completed the setup ourselves. Some guidelines were written by colleagues who had used the solution earlier, so we followed them and implemented them. It takes a long time to install, and you will not be sure whether it works fine. So organizations should prefer to go via virtual machines because if your local system crashes, you must start from scratch to install the software. But if that particular software is installed somewhere on a server, it would be better than installing it in local systems.

I rate this solution a six out of ten.

We use this solution for business analysis and to generate use cases. Each model is developed based on all the requirements that are gathered. There's a small install for the setup on each machine and then we operate through a shared license server that is connected to it.

One of the things that I'm working on right now is improving the health of our models because a number of them are old. We're missing a lot of information that we need as we look towards an enterprise level data lake. This will allow us to better relate ownership of the data to a particular area within ODOT.

I've used the reverse engineering feature a lot. I can take a look at the structure of the database and what relationships it has. Some of the general modeling functions are also really valuable. It's pretty simple to show people how to add objects to model and develop relationships.

I'm trying to find some of the requirements for data cataloging within Power Designer. There are some minor things that could be easier. We're writing up procedures to bring all the modeling back into one group as this reduces delays in production.  

We have experienced one issue with stability which was connected to licensing. For two or three days, nobody could get in and use the tool. Assuming we do not experience a similar incident, I would rate them a seven or eight out of ten for stability. We are no longer signed up for support from Power Designer and so we have needed to determine our own workarounds in these situations which takes some time.

The technical support for this solution is good. When we developed the instructions, we had meetings with them and changed the order of some of the things and added things that they wanted to see. 

I would rate the support for this solution an eight out of ten. 

Positive

The initial setup is straightforward. We had a problem a few years ago when we moved our from a SQL server. Out of 16 installs, we had three failures and that was because people changed from the standard setup.

We have two Power Designer administrators and I am one of them. When anyone checks in, it creates a change list. 

I would rate this solution a seven out of ten. 

We use SAP PowerDesigner for logical data modeling and physical data modeling.

The feature I found valuable in SAP PowerDesigner is extraction.

I also like that my company hasn't faced any issues because of the clear documentation about SAP PowerDesigner.

One disadvantage of SAP PowerDesigner is that you cannot reverse engineer the ALTER statements, so that's an enhancement or area for improvement I'm looking forward to seeing from the SAP team in the future. That should directly reflect on the physical data models my company builds.

I also want SAP PowerDesigner to be able to generate ALTER statements in the future.

I've been using SAP PowerDesigner for over two and a half years.

Stability-wise, SAP PowerDesigner is a seven out of ten.

SAP PowerDesigner is a highly scalable solution.

I haven't contacted the technical support for SAP PowerDesigner. Support only reaches out to me to see if there's any upgrade or patch installation issue.

My company hasn't used a different solution apart from SAP PowerDesigner. It's been the company's solution for the last twenty years. Though my company recently thought of bringing erwin Data Modeler on board, the initiation process was put on hold.

Setting up SAP PowerDesigner was straightforward, though the technical management team handled that. That team makes the software available for people to use.

My company hasn't disclosed ROI details to me, so I have no information on whether there was ROI from SAP PowerDesigner.

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.

My company has implemented SAP PowerDesigner and no longer requires any other data modeling tool.

I'm using the desktop version of SAP PowerDesigner, version 16.5.7.

In the company, more than one hundred people use SAP PowerDesigner. My company only has twenty-two licenses, so most users rely on mobile licenses.

One person can handle the deployment and maintenance of SAP PowerDesigner.

I advise anyone looking into using SAP PowerDesigner to consider the only constraint that erwin Data Modeler could overcome and SAP PowerDesigner couldn't. erwin Data Modeler can generate the ALTER statements apart from the CREATE statements. In contrast, SAP PowerDesigner only generates the CREATE statements, which is why people prefer to use erwin Data Modeler. You also need to consider your budget. Cost-wise, SAP PowerDesigner is better than erwin Data Modeler.

My rating for SAP PowerDesigner is eight out of ten.

My company is a customer of SAP PowerDesigner.

We are using this solution for architecture management.

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 versioning system could be improved. We have to identify the connections and there are lots of limits in certain areas, such as the JDBC driver. I do not have a computer able to do the versioning system because we do not have a database to use. We do not have the budget for that. They should use something, such as GitHub, it would be helpful.

I have been using this solution for five years.

Sometimes the server goes down and I am not able to use the tools. The solution could be more stable.

The solution scalability is good.

The initial setup was very easy.

I have evaluated erwin, it has some enhanced features, such as easy publishing.

We plan to migrate to erwin solution in the near future. I would not recommend it.

I rate SAP PowerDesigner a five out of ten.