ETL Tool Survey 2010

ETL tools have an essential role in the underlying architecture of the modern datawarehouse. As the name suggests they provide structure to the three processes of extracting the data from its source, transforming and cleaning the data, and then loading it into the datawarehouse for further use. How do you judge which of the many ETL suits your organisation best, what are the most important criteria for your organisation, how do you select the most suitable ETL tool and which of the available tools scores well in the criteria that are important to you?  

Norman Manley, is an independent analyst and one of Passionned's managing partners. He has carried out an extensive update to the ETL matrix that was published in 2009 in cooperation with Database Magazine. The resulting ETL Survey 2010 survey looks at the changes that have been made to the existing products, considers the new products which have emerged and provides expert commentary on the pro's and con's of all the important products.

There have been a large number of changes since the 2005 matrix was published, some of the suppliers have been acquired, some have changed their strategic directions, some have announced new partnerships, and the open-source products have emerged as a possible alternative to the established players. In an attempt to avoid comparing apples and pears the products have now been split for comparison purposes into four different categories: Pure ETL, Database integrated, BI integrated and Niche products, since the report was published two of the BI products have been bought by non BI suppliers which may, in time, change their market characteristics. 

In the 2005 study it was still unclear if the online (EAI) products would merge with the more traditional batch ETL products, whilst it still looks as if the customers are not very interested in this combined functionality the vendors have, in most cases, fully implemented the integration in their products. The trends in the marketplace now are towards larger integrated solutions, which may give some of the independent players like Informatica problems in the future or may indeed provide a good alternative to the companies that are looking for a good solution to a specific problem and neither want nor need to buy a complete architecture to do so. Another major change in the last two years has been the attention given to data cleaning, we have known since the beginning of the computer era that most of the problems are caused by poor data quality but at last the market, and the customer, seems to be doing something about it.

For the fifth time Passionned and Database Magazine have classified 19 ETL tools on, amongst others, the following criteria:

  • real-time ETL facilities, web services and on-demand data integration
  • debugging facilities like step-by-step running, break points and watches
  • version management
  • ease-of-use in various areas
  • maintainability and re-usability of specifications
  • connectivity and platform availability 
  • support for slowly-changing-dimensions
  • data quality and  data profiling
  • architectures like hub-and-spoke compared with distributed
  • loading times 

Een deel van de ETL Matrix

In total the products were compared across 80 attributes in 5 different categories, the 40 page report is illustrated with various comparative graphics, scorings tables and an expert opinion on the highest scoring products in each category. The report is available for € 525 (approx US $ 785) the price is stated in Euros and excludes local taxes, any applicable taxes will be applied during the checkout process. 

The following vendors and their products took part in the survey:

  • Pervasive Business Integrator 8.12
  • IBM Information Server (Datastage) 8.1
  • IBM DB2 Warehouse Edition 9.1
  • Cognos Data Manager 8.2
  • Pitney Bowes DataFlow 6.5
  • Informatica PowerCenter 8.5.1
  • Information Builders - Data Migrator 7.6
  • Business Objects - Data Integrator & Data Services XI 3.0
  • SAS Data Integration Studio 4.2
  • IKAN - ETL4ALL 4.2
  • Oracle Warehouse Builder (OWB) 11gR1
  • Microsoft SQL Integration Services 10.0
  • Data Mirror Transformation Server 5.4
  • Talend Open Studio 3.1
  • Transformation Manager 5.2.2
  • Pentaho Data Integration 3.0
  • Elixir Repetoire Data Designer 7.2.2.

Order the report 'The ETL product survey 2010: Integrating data in the Enterprise'

If you need advice in choosing an ETL tool for your organisation, or are interested in the trends and developments in this market you can always contact Passionned, ETL is one of the areas in which we are specialised. Our international ETL site is: www.etltool.com