Hi Jambu,
I have been a long time user of ERwin since 1995. All version after 3.5.2 have been very disappointing in relation with SQL Server. We have a schema with 1000 tables and it has become virtually impossible to use ERwin, even with the latest R7 of the product. When I froward engineer a database from our scema (or from a simple 4 table sample schema) and immediately after that do a complete compare, ERwin finds lots of inconsitent differences between the schema and the database where it should not find any at all!
What is your experience ?
Pascal
I fully agree that ERWIN is not an all in all tool.Also this is not a product review.
I am just showing how to build a Data Model, specificallyfocussing on 'Forward Engineering'
I do build and maintain schemas upside of 200 tables. I usea feature called 'Subject Areas' to handle such large models.
I should admit that I have never worked with a model comprising1000 tables
In my opinion no tool can help us in 'Reverse Engineering' the waythe human mind wants it to be. (atleast as of where the technologiesstand today.) Here again I could wrong like ever.
I have used ER Studio and ERWIN, and neither of these tools help mein reverse engineering a database. I first reverse engineer, and manually spendhours, organizing the diagram, before I can start working on it.
The other two CASE tools I am aware of are Rational Rose and Oracle Case.They may be a bit better, but I am sure there is no way they can draw thediagram the way I wish it to be, when I reverse engineer a database.
In my opinion ERWIN as a Data Modeling tool definitely helps for Forward Engineeringa reasonably sized database.
Complete Compare as well as Macros are not so good in my opinion too.
For Comaring Database Schemas I liked Embarcadero better than any other tool,but to compare a DB Model with a Schema, I am yet to find one.
If I am commenting something wrong, please correct me. I know there are Gurus around.
jambu
Jambu,
Thank you for taking time to share your knowledge with us. We have a copy of Erwin, but have not started using it because we lacked a nice tutorial like you provided. Thanks again.
I am not at all saying that using a tool like ERwin is a nonesense. On the contrary, I do not see how I could go along with my ERP database with the 1000 tables and hundreds of installations that need to be updated n times a year. I have also been a very satisfied user of ERwin in the past.Reverse enginnering also was not the subject. The worst loss of fonctionality is in the compare option. This option has also become useless when trying to shift from trigger based RI to DRI or the other way around. ERwin mixes everything up and you end up with a mess ! Formerly, the trigger based RI was a great time saver as it produced tens of thousands of lines of code automatically.
I am just very disappointed by the new versions of ERwin which work far less better than the "old" ones. I have sent e-mails with long explanations and examples to CA without ever receiving good answers.
My remarks into this forum are just there to express my surprise that you took ERwin as an example.In my quest of a new tool, I came across Xcase http://www.xcase.com/ which seems to be working quite well so far. I have no idea what the company behind it looks like...
Thankz Pascal,
I agree with you. I should not have usedany tool and made the write up on explaining Data Modeling.I just thought I can be of some help to new people who aspire to become Data Modelers.But it does not seem to have served that purpose.
I will try xCASE and see, for my own use.
Again, I fully agree that these tools help us onlyto that extent. Beyond a point we Data Architects haveto slog it out , no other way.
thankz againjambu
I was never impressed with Erwin, I did use Popkin system architect for many years, but these tools are far too expensive for most companies. I have Visio included with Technet/msdn subscription and I probably will buy at some time dezign http://www.datanamic.com/dezign/index.html
I used the demos and was impressed - much cheaper too!
