dbt is an SQL development environment, developed by Fishtown Analytics, now known as dbt Labs. The vendor states that with dbt, analysts take ownership of the entire analytics engineering workflow, from writing data transformation code to deployment and documentation. dbt Core is distributed under the Apache 2.0 license, and paid Teams and Enterprise editions are available.
$0
per month per seat
Oracle Data Service Integrator
Score 6.4 out of 10
N/A
Oracle Data Service Integrator provides companies the ability to develop and manage federated data services for accessing single views of disparate information. Oracle Data Service Integrator is standards based, declarative, and enables re-usability of data services.
If you can load your data first into your warehouse, dbt is excellent. It does the T(ransformation) part of ELT brilliantly but does not do the E(xtract) or L(oad) part. If you know SQL or your development team knows SQL, it's a framework and extension around that. So, it's easy to learn and easy to hire people with that technical skill (as opposed to specific Informatica, SnapLogic, etc. experience). dbt uses plain text files and integrates with GitHub. You can easily see the changes made between versions. In GUI-based UIs it was always hard to tell what someone had changed. Each "model" is essentially a "SELECT" statement. You never need to do a "CREATE TABLE" or "CREATE VIEW" - it's all done for you, leaving you to work on the business logic. Instead of saying "FROM specific_db.schema.table" you indicate "FROM ref('my_other_model')". It creates an internal dependency diagram you can view in a DAG. When you deploy, the dependencies work like magic in your various environments. They also have great documentation, an active slack community, training, and support. I like the enhancements they have been making and I believe they are headed in a good direction.
Once Oracle Data Service Integrator is set up properly, it is quite simple to snatch data from a myriad of disparate sources and put them into a single repository. Due to cost factors, it is not for the faint of heart; however, if you can handle it, the benefits will quickly outpace the initial investment. To take full advantage of the power of ODSI, I would recommend the training that Oracle provides.
Slow load times of the dbt cloud environment (they're working on it via a new UI though)
More out-of-the-box solutions for managing procedures, functions, etc would be nice to have, but honestly, it's pretty easy to figure out how to adapt dbt macros
Most ETL pipeline products have a T layer, but dbt just does it better. The transformation is on steroids compared to the others. Also, just allows much more Adhoc solutions for very specific projects. Those ETL tools are probably better on the T part if you don't need too many transforms - also dbt is pretty much free dependent on how you work it, also extremely scalable.
While we tested and evaluated multiple data service providers, we came to choose Oracle Data Service Integrator since our infrastructure was so heavily dependent on Oracle software. The implementation would be easier and the difference in the number of features and performance wasn't enough to sway us in another direction.