erwin Data Modeler Reviews and Ratings

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Erwin was used as a true enterprise data modeling tool, largely by a team of data architects and modelers, to ensure consistent modeling across the corporation. As a large organization it helped address the needs of multiple developers often needing to work within the same model at the same time. It also provided centralization an assured developers were working with the correct version of the model.

Likelihood to Recommend

I have two reservations for ranking erwin higher than I have. One is the cost of the tool. For smaller shops, it can be a tough pill to swallow and difficult to convince management of its value. The other is that I consider erwin to be essentially on par with embarcadero. That being said, erwin is excellent if you need centralized management of your models. This naturally lends itself to a larger shop, but this management is still valuable for smaller companies as well so long as a good process is in place.

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Erwin Data Modeler is an enterprise modeling tool often used by government agencies and organizations to design, maintain, and implement databases to support enterprise applications. Government agencies and organizations usually select a standard data modeling tool in which they can consistently implement databases and maintain them. It provides a standard software toolset that all projects can use.

Likelihood to Recommend

Erwin Data Modeler is an enterprise-level tool and should be considered for managing large DB implementations or when aligning to an existing organization's naming standards/definitions/data types is needed. This is a key tool for a Data Architect to design databases. It is possible the cost would not make it ideal for small projects where scripts could be easily managed by scripts.

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We are using erwin Data Modeler now for the ERD diagram design. We then provide the ERD to end-users or developers so they can make utilize it while designing their applications. We are also using it for some SQL Server change management. For example, when end-users request table changes, we then reverse engineer the existing DB or table, make the change, and then have erwin Data Modeler generate an Alter script that we can reuse once promoted to Production.

Likelihood to Recommend

Erwin Data Modeler great when trying to model a relational DB that is well established and mainstream. A little less useful for something like Amazon Athena, which kind of makes sense. It makes handy diagrams that have lots of information but is also not very visually appealing to view. Further, it's a little obtuse to figure out initially, again due to option overload - sometimes I wish it had a 'simple' and 'advanced' view. It is excellent for automating diagrams and generating changes for existing DBs.

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Erwin Data Modeler was used by our DBA and Data Architecture to design new data models and document the existing physical databases by reverse engineering them.

Likelihood to Recommend

<ul><li>Modeling of complex environments</li><li>Documenting existing databases</li><li>Communication tool between BAs, Architects, DBAs and Developers</li><li>Modeling and documentation tool for developing our Data Warehouse</li></ul>

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We currently use erwin Data Modeler on a very small scale. We use it to standardize record abbreviations and field names.

Likelihood to Recommend

erwin has many capabilities that our company does not use to the full potential. We simply use it as a naming conversion tool to standardize our field names.

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We are a big organization that supports multiple applications. We use erwin Data Modeler for database model design before it can actually make to the database.

We build ER diagrams out of requirement documents and then use these ER diagrams to discuss in meetings with functional and DBA teams. Once the design is approved, we further use erwin Data Modeler to make both logical and physical data models, include triggers and constraints in the model, and forward engineer deployment scripts for the DBA team.

erwin Data Modeler has greatly helped us maintain a SDLC for database changes and version control.

Likelihood to Recommend

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.

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We are using erwin Data Modeler for initial design, development and deployment phases. We use it to design ER diagrams for our new databases or incorporate change requests into existing. We then forward engineer deployment scripts for erwin directly and deploy it to various database environments. This has helped us version control and release control in our database environments. It is also easier to discuss with functional team by presenting them with ER diagram block instead of talking to them in database language.

Likelihood to Recommend

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.