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CA's AllFusion ERwin Data Modeler r7: Page 3 of 4

Data modelers often waste time performing extra steps to accomplish routine tasks because of the inconsistent implementation of model-manipulation features in many products. In creating entity relationships, AllFusion ERwin DM draws the relationship line and establishes the foreign key automatically. By comparison, Microsoft's Visio makes you draw the relationship line, pushing the end of that line into the center of the entity. One can only hope the line somehow connects.

When you click inside an entity, you can grab attributes and move them freely within an entity, or from entity to entity. Entities can also be resized.

Performance and Quality

We tested AllFusion ERwin DM on an anemic Compaq R4000 running a 1.8-GHz AMD Sempron processor with 512 MB of memory (CA recommends at least 2.0 GHz and 1 GB) running Window XP Professional. Most Windows apps running in this environment execute reasonably well, with the exception of those that require extensive graphics or I/O. AllFusion ERwin DM ran surprisingly well, with many functions achieving subsecond response time. Some of the more resource-taxing functions, such as forward and reverse engineering, took slightly longer, but overall, the product was remarkably fast, considering our environment.

Managers in most large IT shops still wrestle with quality issues, especially in the area of database standards and naming conventions. AllFusion's Naming Standards Editor helps address these issues.The editor enables defining entity and attribute structures by using the logical or physical tabs; the entity and attribute names can be entered using the glossary. Organizations that have naming conventions may import the names from existing sources.