ER/Studio Data Architect vs. IBM Rational System Architect Designer

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

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

• 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

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

Incentivized

• 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

• 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

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

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

• 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

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

Incentivized