Platinum ERwin: Cost

The department head in which the class is going to be taugh should contact ERwin and explain how Penn St is going to teach all these further managers there product and how ERwin could get lots of publicity and maybe a tax deduction, etc, etc. ERwin should give you a couple of copies. Patrick Lanphier wrote: > We here at The Pennsylvania State University would like to use ERwin for our CACTUS project and then > go on to teach database modeling with ERwin in the future, however, we can not afford to even buy > two copies of ERwin at $2865.00 with their large discount of 18% (just kidding) and maintenance of > $695.00 on each license which I believe they said could not be discounted. We would also like to > use the Modelmart with a price tag of $9,500 with it's 5% discount. This comes to a total price tag > of $16,620 which is unreasonable in academia. Many of you would probably think this discounting > would be reasonable, however, in academia this is unacceptable, if you would like to see your > children learn the latest tools before they get out of college so that they can have a step up in > getting the job they desire in this field then we can not allow this to happen. If you have a > contact at Platinum that could truly assist me or would like to contact Platinum yourself, it would > be greatly appreciated. > > Patrick Lanphier > Advanced Information Technologies > The Pennsylvania State University

Patrick, Have you looked at alternatives such as Popkin's System Architect? I know that Temple is using it and that Popkin has a student version with limited capabilities at a price that even students on a tight budget can afford. regards Jerry Gitomer ------------------------------------------------------------ Patrick Lanphier wrote in message <3724A77E.A35CCF2B@psu.edu>... >We here at The Pennsylvania State University would like to use ERwin for our CACTUS project and then >go on to teach database modeling with ERwin in the future, however, we can not afford to even buy >two copies of ERwin at $2865.00 with their large discount of 18% (just kidding) and maintenance of >$695.00 on each license which I believe they said could not be discounted. We would also like to >use the Modelmart with a price tag of $9,500 with it's 5% discount. This comes to a total price tag >of $16,620 which is unreasonable in academia. Many of you would probably think this discounting >would be reasonable, however, in academia this is unacceptable, if you would like to see your >children learn the latest tools before they get out of college so that they can have a step up in >getting the job they desire in this field then we can not allow this to happen. If you have a >contact at Platinum that could truly assist me or would like to contact Platinum yourself, it would >be greatly appreciated. > >Patrick Lanphier >Advanced Information Technologies >The Pennsylvania State University

We here at The Pennsylvania State University would like to use ERwin for our CACTUS project and then go on to teach database modeling with ERwin in the future, however, we can not afford to even buy two copies of ERwin at $2865.00 with their large discount of 18% (just kidding) and maintenance of $695.00 on each license which I believe they said could not be discounted. We would also like to use the Modelmart with a price tag of $9,500 with it's 5% discount. This comes to a total price tag of $16,620 which is unreasonable in academia. Many of you would probably think this discounting would be reasonable, however, in academia this is unacceptable, if you would like to see your children learn the latest tools before they get out of college so that they can have a step up in getting the job they desire in this field then we can not allow this to happen. If you have a contact at Platinum that could truly assist me or would like to contact Platinum yourself, it would be greatly appreciated. Patrick Lanphier Advanced Information Technologies The Pennsylvania State University

I'm sorry, but if a university can pay the high salaries that professors and especially administrators get, and charge the tuition and fees they do, then they most certainly can pay the price for the tools they use. If ERwin does not find it beneficial to distribute their product at a high discount, then so be it. It is quite different to deep discount the software a student buys. I suggest you find willing alumnae to purchase it for you, or ask your faculty to take a cut in pay. Cross-posting your whining spam across the database newsgroups, just doesn't cut it with me. I reserve my charitable contributions for those that genuinely need it. ----- Arvin Meyer onsite@esinet.net Patrick Lanphier wrote in message <3724A77E.A35CCF2B@psu.edu>... >We here at The Pennsylvania State University would like to use ERwin for our CACTUS project and then >go on to teach database modeling with ERwin in the future, however, we can not afford to even buy >two copies of ERwin at $2865.00 with their large discount of 18% (just kidding) and maintenance of >$695.00 on each license which I believe they said could not be discounted. We would also like to >use the Modelmart with a price tag of $9,500 with it's 5% discount. This comes to a total price tag >of $16,620 which is unreasonable in academia. Many of you would probably think this discounting >would be reasonable, however, in academia this is unacceptable, if you would like to see your >children learn the latest tools before they get out of college so that they can have a step up in >getting the job they desire in this field then we can not allow this to happen. If you have a >contact at Platinum that could truly assist me or would like to contact Platinum yourself, it would >be greatly appreciated. > >Patrick Lanphier >Advanced Information Technologies >The Pennsylvania State University

Patrick, That's a steep price for small businesses too. I switched from Erwin (which I used on a project at a prior company) to "StarDesignor" -- which cost me $295. at Egghead software. A las, Sybase purchased the rights to StarDesignor (which looks so much like Erwin) and it has been buried into their PowerBuilder products to the point where the features I use StarDesignor for appear to be broken up across multiple products: 1. I need to point Star Designor at sql files or ODBC connections to remote Informix databases and "reverse engineer" the file and built the diagrams to know what I'm dealing with when I get brought in to review schema design and database server hardware selection and tuning studies. 2. I use multiple versions of Informix and am glad Sybase still has download support for multiple versions of Informix. 3. I don't have any desire to work with the many PC databases at all so expanding support there by PowerBuilder is a non-plus. 4. I don't have any desire to use Visual Basic so clearly can't use (AND WON'T PAY FOR) the PowerBuilder features for VB application generation. 5. PowerBuilder is not useful in the UNIX environments I work in (to deliver CGI-based Web-driven database applications to my end-users) so I am not interested in paying for the PB application generation. 6. My need is for a database documentation and reverse engineering tool that can generate SQL so that it is used by the DBA -- not the application programmers. Despite spending hundreds of dollars with Sybase/Powerbuilder they have yet to deliver the Erwin and/or StarDesignor functionality that was finally an answer to the needs of Informix UNIX DBAs. PS I'll work on pushing your request to the software vendors as I meet with them. Larry Timmins 516-663-0426 Patrick Lanphier wrote: > We here at The Pennsylvania State University would like to use ERwin for our CACTUS project and then > go on to teach database modeling with ERwin in the future, however, we can not afford to even buy > two copies of ERwin at $2865.00 with their large discount of 18% (just kidding) and maintenance of > $695.00 on each license which I believe they said could not be discounted. We would also like to > use the Modelmart with a price tag of $9,500 with it's 5% discount. This comes to a total price tag > of $16,620 which is unreasonable in academia. Many of you would probably think this discounting > would be reasonable, however, in academia this is unacceptable, if you would like to see your > children learn the latest tools before they get out of college so that they can have a step up in > getting the job they desire in this field then we can not allow this to happen. If you have a > contact at Platinum that could truly assist me or would like to contact Platinum yourself, it would > be greatly appreciated. > > Patrick Lanphier > Advanced Information Technologies > The Pennsylvania State University

Patrick, You may also want to check out Embarcadero's ERStudio. It's not as full-featured as ERWin, but has all the major data modeling functionality. It's less expensive than ERWin; not sure if they have academic discounts. Sean Patrick Lanphier <planphier@psu.edu> wrote in message news:3724A77E.A35CCF2B@psu.edu... > We here at The Pennsylvania State University would like to use ERwin for our CACTUS project and then > go on to teach database modeling with ERwin in the future, however, we can not afford to even buy > two copies of ERwin at $2865.00 with their large discount of 18% (just kidding) and maintenance of > $695.00 on each license which I believe they said could not be discounted. We would also like to > use the Modelmart with a price tag of $9,500 with it's 5% discount. This comes to a total price tag > of $16,620 which is unreasonable in academia. Many of you would probably think this discounting > would be reasonable, however, in academia this is unacceptable, if you would like to see your > children learn the latest tools before they get out of college so that they can have a step up in > getting the job they desire in this field then we can not allow this to happen. If you have a > contact at Platinum that could truly assist me or would like to contact Platinum yourself, it would > be greatly appreciated. > > Patrick Lanphier > Advanced Information Technologies > The Pennsylvania State University

You should add Silverrun to the list of products you're considering since it's very "Informix-friendly". As far as I remember from an eval I did it can do all but "9. Test Data Generation". System Architect (version one year old or older) is very user unfriendly (regardless of DBMS). ERwin is the mostly widely used and I think it has very rich functionality. Another criterion you may want to consider adding to your wish list is "Extensibility" meaning how much (if at all) you can expand the meta-data model. Let us know of your findings?! :) Kleanthis

I am looking for an ER tool that will provide me with the below functionality? Some possibilities are System Architect, ERwin, ERstudio, Powerdesigner, Designer 2000 and Sterling products. 1. Check out an individual objects in the model 2. Bi-Direction Version Control (Database -> Model and Model -> Database) 3. Table maintenance functionality that will preserve data and alter a table 4. Revision/Version History 5. Multiple User Access 6. Allow all constraint restrictions (child delete, insert, update; parent delete, insert, update) 7. A good layout manager and printing capabilities 8. HTML publishing of the model 9. Test Data Generation 10. Table: physical info manipulation (maxextents, minextents, buffer pool, etc.) 11. Stable 12. With versioning the ability to rollback changes to the database Patrick Lanphier Advanced Informational Technologies The Pennsylvania State University