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ERD Designer vs. SAP PowerDesigner

ERD Designer is a browser-based data modeler for data architects who wish to develop logical and physical data-models, and generate database schemas from them, without installing or licensing a desktop suite.

Where ERD Designer excels

  1. ERD Designer runs in your browser. You don’t need to install anything to begin modelling. PowerDesigner is a Windows desktop application that requires licensing, a large financial commitment, and time to acquire and install.
  2. ERD Designer will let you start work NOW – for FREE. If you find you like the tool you can switch to a paid plan to generate DDL, or our Advanced Plan for more complex features. Paste your schema DDL into the application or our website now, and start working with the resulting diagram – without cost – and no credit card required. PowerDesigner is licensed per seat and will cost you an order-of-magnitude more money.
  3. ERD Designer’s logical models are equivalent to PowerDesigner’s conceptual models, only they’re way easier to use. After the data architect creates a logical model, ERD Designer will generate a physical model for review/edit prior to schema generation.
  4. ERD Designer has the ability to convert one database type to another. Any conversion between PostgreSQL, Oracle, SQL Server, MySQL, MariaDB, SQLite, Amazon Redshift, Google BigQuery and Snowflake, can be done automatically using ERD Designer. Where PowerDesigner simply swaps the types, ERD Designer asks you before each judgement call, lists every changed column for your review, warns about anything the new database cannot hold, and every direction is tested against real databases with real data.
  5. ERD Designer’s AI Assist feature allows you to literally speak to the application, telling it what you want developed in plain English, and it will create the ERD for you. AI Assist also has an Interview Mode. It will interview a new business owner and generate an entity relationship diagram based on the answers to its questions. PowerDesigner has no AI capability that we know of.
  6. ERD Designer includes a small Agent installation that enables it to interact with databases on your machine or your local network. If you want ERD Designer to forward or reverse engineer directly to your database, the Agent can be installed to do exactly that. Your database credentials never leave your machine, and the Agent only interacts with your browser – providing a safe and secure means by which you may manage your database.
  7. Perhaps one of the most serious deficiencies of most modeling tools is their inability to organize a diagram automatically. ERD Designer has this capability as a main feature. PowerDesigner does not.

Moving from PowerDesigner

Generate DDL from your PowerDesigner physical model, paste it below, and it opens in ERD Designer as a diagram.

You sign up free and land on your diagram. Your script is held for 15 minutes and deleted from our server the moment you open it.

Which plan you need

ERD Designer’s Basic Plan is FREE. You can paste your DDL into it and start diagramming immediately. Pro to generate DDL, read and deploy to live databases, and convert between databases; Advanced for logical models and AI-assisted modelling.

See also: ERD Designer vs. erwin Data Modeler · converting a schema between databases · the ERD Designer Agent.

PowerDesigner is a trademark of SAP SE. ERD Designer is not affiliated with SAP.

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