erwin Data Modeler vs. IBM Rational System Architect Designer

If you have a database environment that gets frequent schema object change requests. erwin Data Modeler is a great tool for version control and release control. Also, it's very useful to communicate between database and application teams.

Incentivized

If you need a whole infrastructure and architect view, IBM Rational System Architect is the way to go. If you need a single diagram or your business process is young enough to support hard documenting, you are fine with an open source tool.

Incentivized

• Creation of logical data models
• Reverse engineering
• Excellent communication tool in conversations with Developers and BAs
• As a company, Erwin provides lots of tutorials and how-tos.

Incentivized

• MS Office exporting
• UML modeling
• Transformation to code
• A reverse transformation from code
• Integrates with other IBM products

Incentivized

• erwin Data Modeler allows only 25 entities in a trial version. It really limits you when you want to try out the product before actually deciding to pay for licensing cost. It would be rather helpful if they limit the trial period by days instead.
• The UI is pretty good but sometimes the large diagrams are hard to manage. A little improvement in that area would be helpful.

Incentivized

• Always has a price. And IBM is not cheap
• Sequence diagrams can get messy (still has a good UI)
• Only support few databases as backend repositories like SQL Server and Oracle

Incentivized

The product is well designed and intuitive to use. The number of buttons and options can look a bit overwhelming initially but they come very handy when you get used to product.

Incentivized

CA customer support and our account manager have been able to support us with any issues that we have had, from managing our serial keys to issues we logged tickets to resolve. There are aspects of key management that have made it difficult over the years but support usually has worked with us.

Incentivized

I have used few other data modeling tools like Toad Data Modeler and SQL Developer Data Modeler. erwin Data Modeler is easy to use and has additional features that make overall data modeling productive and easy to manage.

Incentivized

If you have a budget or the need for a complex modeler or need diagram transformation to code or vice-versa, IBM Rational System Architect is the way to go. If you need few diagrams or don't need the complexity or don't have a budget, Bizagi or Star UML get the things done.

Incentivized

• Reduced rework from when models were maintained individually.
• Reduced the amount of time to generate and compare models during development.
• Massively reduced the amount of time to reverse engineer 3rd party data models for analysis.

Incentivized

• Clients like good modeling. A good diagram reduce costs in incidents and doubts of bad interpretations
• Reduce costs of recognition of old software.

Incentivized