Sparx Enterprise Architect VS Visual Paradigm

Question

I need help with important decision. Which tool is better?

Sparx Enterprise Architect or Visual Paradigm?

I already searched other tools and looked at popular comparison list of UML-tools. I have tried both of tools, but can't decide which is better.

About my case: development department are going to standardize the analysis and modeling of applications. Historically we used Visio, but it's hard to monitor and control already. There are about 60 people with different needs:

• analytics - BPMN, UML modeling, Entity modeling
• sysadmins - deployment schemes
• architectures - components and package diagramms

For additional information we use C# and VSTS. The competency of personal is different and learning curve is most important point.

What is your opinion about this comparison?

Answer 1

The tool doesn’t matter so much as the model you collectively build, its structure, its governance, the skills you need to create and maintain it, and the commitment to keeping all of these around so that you can get a return on your investment. There will always be an investment hump. So long as the tool meets basic needs like formal language support and repository model paradigm then really the choice is down to less important attributes like whether you like the price, visual format it produces and whether you will make use of the additional features it offers. Both VP and Sparx will support your needs for modelling.

Answer 2

I have been using Visual Paradigm since many years; recently I decided to try EA, too. Since I am historically used to VP, I found the GUI navigation in EA less intuitive, but this may be subjective. The other thing, however, could be important: EA does not support SVG export of diagrams, only WMF and EMF, and the latter, when I tried to open them in InkScape, were corrupt.

Concerning performance: VP is written in Java and therefore comparatively slow (especially when loading). EA is much faster.