Avolution ABACUS vs. erwin Data Modeler

Well suited scenarios include IT portfolio management, project portfolio management, enterprise architecture planning, modeling of business capabilities, using standard frameworks that ship out of the box such as TOGAF, and integration with SharePoint. Less appropriate scenarios would be detailed data modeling and using the tool expecting to get model drive code execution.

Incentivized

I have had a chance to use few other data modeling tools from Quest and Oracle, but I am most comfortable using erwin Data Modeler. They understand your data modeling needs and have designed the software to give you a feeling of completeness when you are designing a data model.

Incentivized

• Modelling the Enterprise through the creation of catalogues and matrices of Enterprise information
• Creation of views to supports strategy execution and decision making
• Central storage of Enterprise information
• Management of a agreed meta model

Incentivized

• Reverse Engineering: I love the way we can import an SQL file containing schema meta data and generate ER diagram out of it. This is specifically useful if you are implementing erwin Data Modeler for an existing database.
• Forward Engineering: We use this feature very frequently. Where we do database changes in our physical and logical data models and then generate deployment scripts for the changes made.
• Physical vs Logical Models: I like to have my database model split into physical and logical models and at the same time still linked to each other. Any changes you make to logical model or physical model shows up in the other.

Incentivized

• More standard connectors for integration with other modeling tools could be beneficial for companies having legacy tools/fragmented toolsets.
• Better automated diagramming features would be useful.

Incentivized

• Cost is the single largest barrier to entry with this tool.
• Would like to see a greater variety of export options available for use outside of the tool, for example as a vector graphic.
• Support has been uneven at times.

Incentivized

I had a lot of experience using erwin Data Modeler for designing data models. I think it's pretty intuitive and easy to use. It has enough features to represent your database requirements in form of a model.

Incentivized

Highly knowledgable team and fast response times

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

- Microsoft tools are manual and data is not centralized

- ARIS is not as flexible as Avolution

- LeanIX is close, but lacks business content/accelerators that Avolution provides

- LeanIX is in the cloud and multi-user

Incentivized

Not listed, but I've only used alternatives built into something like the Squirrel SQL editor. That one is semi-functional but lacking many features and, in some instances, just plain wrong. The only pro there is that it's freely available and works over ODBC. I've tried some of the other free ones like Creately but didn't have much success.

Incentivized

• Positive - time to value for EA activities
• Positive - robust decision making

Incentivized

• It is difficult to assign a monetary value to it. The initial learning curve was fairly long.
• It allows us to have better support documentation.
• It allows ease of communications between functional units.

Incentivized