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Introducing ER/Studio Data Architect

ER/Studio Data Architect is a visual modeling application used for platform-independent logical data architecture analysis and design, in addition to platform-specific physical database design and construction. The powerful, multi-level design environment addresses the everyday needs of database administrators, developers, and data architects who build and maintain large, complex database applications and strive to consolidate, report, and re-use metadata across the enterprise.

The progressive interface and simplicity of ER/Studio Data Architect has been designed to effectively address the ease-of-use issues which have plagued data modeling and CASE tools for the past decade and more. The application equips you to create, understand, and manage the life-cycle of mission-critical database designs and business metadata within the enterprise.


ER/Studio Data Architect is rich and customizable, offering strong logical design capabilities like:

  • The ability to spawn many physical designs from a corporate logical design.
  • Bi-directional model comparison and information synchronization.
  • Visual-Basic for Applications API for product customization.
  • Powerful DDL reverse engineering and generation.
  • Metadata import and export capabilities.
  • Data lineage documentation.
  • Sophisticated XML, HTML, and RTF-based documentation and reporting facilities.
Feature ER/Studio DA Professional ER/Studio DA ERDA Developer Edition
* For a list of supported database platforms in the ER/Studio Data Architect Developer edition provided with the RAD Studio Architect edition, see Supported Database Platforms.
Physical / logical modeling Checkmark.png Checkmark.png Checkmark.png
Forward / reverse engineering Checkmark.png Checkmark.png Checkmark.png
Repository (model version control) Checkmark.png
Agile change management Checkmark.png
Metadata import/export capabilities Checkmark.png Checkmark.png


Model import bridges included Checkmark.png Checkmark.png
Create HTML & RTF reports Checkmark.png Checkmark.png Checkmark.png
Create reports in other formats (XML Schema, PNG, JPEG and DTD Output) Checkmark.png Checkmark.png
RDBMS platforms Checkmark.png Checkmark.png Checkmark.png*
Big data platforms – MongoDB, Hadoop Hive Checkmark.png Checkmark.png
Data source registry Checkmark.png Checkmark.png

Product Benefits by Audience

  • Data Modelers and Data Architects: ER/Studio Data Architect is critical for organizations concerned with eliminating data redundancy, creating an enterprise view of data assets, and assisting development with making informed decisions about how best to reuse elements pre-defined by the enterprise. Its powerful logical (non-database or technology specific) analysis and design environment helps to normalize and create an enterprise view of the objects concerning the data managed by an organization. More importantly, it can communicate this quickly through powerful reporting and metadata exchange mechanisms throughout the enterprise.
  • Database Administrators and Database Developers: Managing databases can be incredibly difficult without a blueprint or roadmap to understand important object dependencies. ER/Studio Data Architect's round-trip engineering capabilities including database reverse-engineering provide database administrators (DBAs) or developers with important physical data models in seconds. These models can be used as powerful and efficient change management platforms, allowing users to update a model with the required changes which need to be implemented at the database and automatically generate DBMS-specific, syntactically correct, alteration or database DDL.
  • Business and IT Managers: ER/Studio Data Architect's robust reporting facilities allow critical information about designs to the enterprise to be delivered in seconds. This heavily leveraged and beneficial capability of ER/Studio DA allows users to provide, in literally seconds, clear, easily navigable and safe-to-distribute documentation about a database or enterprise data model to those who need to review it.

See Also