Importing ERwin models

[Madani]

Hi

I am a newbie to EA (Installed EA/Corp Edn just yesterday).  Please be nice to me, thanks.  :-)

I want to import a few CA Erwin models into EA.  Could you and/or others point me to material that I can use?  Thanks.
All I am currently interested is doing data modelling in EA (as I cant afford the ERwin license :-( ) of the CA Erwin models.

I notice a thread where Hans Olthaf and others have successfully imported ERwin (as large as 4000+ entities).
I will be grateful for any help. 

Many thanks. - Madani

[PeterHeintz]

I do not know what Erwin offers for you, but if you are just interested e.g. in creating ER-Models you can use just the features provided by EA.

[Hans Olthof]

Hi Madani,

Erwin has an export function which puts out Sparx formatted xmi files.
There are a number of options to play with, but the defaults work.
Then in sparx do an import from xmi.
All elements and relationships are imported, but for some reason, I have not been able to bring in diagrams. For me, diagrams have not been important, so I have not pursued them.

Hope this helps,
Hans

[Eric_Archi]

I'm new to EA, and I also have a question about importing ERwin models, with the specific file extension of DM1.  I also believe that Embarcadero has bought out ERwin, but kept the same file formats.

From my understanding, the DM1 is a database model that the previous development team created in ERwin, then are maintaining in Embarcadero to modify and produce the Database schema for updated releases.  We want to import this into Sparx to use our preferred tool, and encourage them to do the same.

[Richard Freggi]

I am maybe not the most qualified person to post because my imports from ERWin (circa 2015... I forgot which ERWin version but it was the current one) did not go well.  I followed the instructions in ERWin to export as Sparx EA compatible XMI; all models imported but there were missing relationships so I had to manually correct the imported model, very time consuming.  Tried several times with different formats, still not good.

For me the safest way is to forward engineer the source model, create a database with it (in mySQL, SQLite, Oracle express etc), then connect Sparx to that database and reverse engineer it.

Good luck!

[rupertkiwi]

We had the same problem with converting Erwin files to EA.

We started using this product for the conversion:

http://toolbus.de/convert_erwin_to_enterprise-architect/

and it worked pretty well.

It brings everything across, including diagrams. Only drawback was some of the diagrams needed rearranging.

[mgraval]

Anyone able to get an Erwin data (9.6) import into Sparx EA 13 1351 successfully with all relationships and diagrams. I have been able to import the data reference information but all relationships and diagrams are missing. Meaning in order to model it would be manual which is unrealistic as I am importing over 30 oracle db with thousands of tables and over 25 MSSQL databases. Any suggestions.

[Nizam]

Erwin allows you to export in EA recognizable XML, importing this in EA will create all entities its associations, subtype/ supertype, etc. But the diagrams will not be imported .
We need to create them manually, for subsequent synchronizations we use the MDG Office to export EA items as excel (with Synch Information), and have Excel extracts from Erwin mapped against it and import it back to EA using Import Excel (yes it is a bit of effort but we do it on a monthly refresh from Erwin)