ER/Studio Data Architect vs. IBM InfoSphere Information Server

ER/Studio is great for providing data model images for teammates to use when they are not data modelers.

Incentivized

You can use infosphere: -If you have multiple targets and source systems and they are different than each other. -If your infostructure is so big and unplaned well so you can't find what you want to see. -If your databases not so strong to process your data

Incentivized

• ER/Studio is great for dividing logical and physical design. A logical model can be used with different physical platforms.
• Studio can a useful macro capability that allows me to apply the naming standards across the model with ease and consistency.
• ER/Studio does a very good job at comparing the model with the actual database and generating DDL scripts for production deployments.
• ER/Studio has an excellent reporting and model publishing capabilities allowing me to produce models in the HTML format and publish them for the team as needed.

Incentivized

• It is very strong to make transformations/data derivations
• It is very easy to connect to various external data sources. It has an interface (stages) for each connection that simplifies the task
• It is a stable platform. And that parallelism helps make it fast for loading, if the process is well designed

• Relationships are a bit on the weaker side. Many times I found orphaned relationships that I could not get rid of, or additional columns that were automatically created during the push to the physical model that appear to be due to key constraint bugs
• There are a lot of bugs introduced when merging keys. I tend to model 2 tables for example logically, establish the relationship, and then merge the additional key column that is automatically created when establishing the relationship. This sometimes causes downstream issues with the physical model (creating duplicate columns with _1 appended)
• Meta-data could be improved. I find it hard to keep descriptions and other meta information clean when copying and pasting from other sources due to formatting tags being introduced on each object (font, size, color, etc.). The attachment feature comes in handy, however I am looking for the ability to cleanly document and map multiple sources to a single target while providing searchability and traceability

Incentivized

• Lack of a strong web development environment.
• Metadata propagation in Jobs is somewhat complex.
• The possibility to develop jobs in Parallel and/or Server Engines is confusing.

• Scale of implementation
• IBM techsupport

Incentivized

I can call or email support and both get quick turn around. The only issue is they are on the west coast (US) and have a west coast work schedule and I'm on the East coast.

Incentivized

ER Studio Data Architect is a global leader in the data modelling space and most other solutions that have support for third party data models include support for ER Studio Data Architect file formats. Many of the features are a bit more intuitive than the competitors and several of our vendors were already using Data Architect themselves which helped solidify the choice.

Incentivized

I particularly believe that Information Server, especially DataStage, is superior in many aspects to the Oracle Data Integrator tool. Several market analysts such as Gartner and / or Forrester better position DataStage on the Oracle solution.

• Using ER\Studio to create models and eventually the actual database schema allows for a picture that is understandable to the customer and saves significant time writing DDL to create the database objects (tables, indexes, relationships, constraints...)
• A nice customer interface tool so you can create a web based interface to the metadata for a particular design.
• The tool also supports sub-models so you can break a large project into smaller parts, I find this feature very helpful.

Incentivized

• Information Server can positively impact the costs of companies by increasing the productivity of development and therefore reduce their time and costs. It is estimated that DataStage can increase a developer's productivity by 40% on average.
• Better data governance
• Improve data quality and reduce bad data impacts

Incentivized