Informatica PowerCenter was data integration technology designed to form the foundation for data integration initiatives, application migration, or analytics. It is a legacy product.
N/A
Oracle Data Integrator (ODI)
Score 6.9 out of 10
N/A
Oracle Data Integrator is an ELT data integrator designed with interoperability other Oracle programs. The program focuses on a high-performance capacity to support Big Data use within Oracle.
I have used tools like Streamsets for streaming data sources and in the past used Informatica Power Center for moving data from sources and applying the necessary transformation.
Oracle Data Integrator works very well if the rest of your systems are in the Oracle environment. There are some other good alternatives out there, but for what Oracle Data Integrator has to offer, it is good. It is also a little harder to use compared to the other ones I have …
1.- Scenaries with poor sources of data is not recomended (Very bad ROI). The solution is for medium-big enterprises with a lot of sources of data and users. 2.- Bank and finance enviroment to integrate differente data form trading, Regulatory reports, decisions makers, fraud and financial crimes because in this kind of scenary the quality of data is the base of the business. 3.- Departments of development and test of applications in enterprises because you can design enviroments, out of the production systems, to development and test the new API's or updateds made.
Oracle Data Integrator is well suited in all the situations where you need to integrate data from and to different systems/technologies/environments or to schedule some tasks. I've used it on Oracle Database (Data Warehouses or Data Marts), with great loading and transforming performances to accomplish any kind of relational task. This is true for all Oracle applications (like Hyperion Planning, Hyperion Essbase, Hyperion Financial Management, and so on). I've also used it to manage files on different operating systems, to execute procedures in various languages and to read and write data from and to non-Oracle technologies, and I can confirm that its performances have always been very good. It can become less appropriate depending on the expenses that can be afforded by the customer since its license costs are quite high.
Informatica Powercenter is an innovative software that works with ETL-type data integration. Connectivity to almost all the database systems.
Great documentation and customer support.
It has a various solution to address data quality issues. data masking, data virtualization. It has various supporting tools or MDM, IDQ, Analyst, BigData which can be used to analyze data and correct it.
Oracle Data Integrator nearly addresses every data issue that one can expect. Oracle Data Integrator is tightly integrated to the Oracle Suite of products. This is one of the major strengths of Oracle Data Integrator. Oracle Data Integrator is part of the Oracle Business Intelligence Applications Suite - which is highly used by various industries. This tool replaced Informatica ETL in Oracle Business Intelligence Applications Suite.
Oracle Data Integrator comes with many pre-written data packages. If one has to load data from Excel to Oracle Database, there is a package that is ready available for them - cutting down lot of effort on writing the code. Similarly, there are packages for Oracle to SQL, SQL to Oracle and all other possible combinations. Developers love this feature.
Oracle Data Integrator relies highly on the database for processing. This is actually an ELT tool rather than an ETL tool. It first loads all the data into target instance and then transforms it at the expense of database resources. This light footprint makes this tool very special.
The other major advantage of Oracle Data Integrator, like any other Oracle products, is a readily available developer pool. As all Oracle products are free to download for demo environments, many organizations prefer to play around with a product before purchasing it. Also, Oracle support and community is a big advantage compared to other vendors.
There are too many ways to perform the same or similar functions which in turn makes it challenging to trace what a workflow is doing and at which point (ex. sessions can be designed as static or re-usable and the override can occur at the session or workflow, or both which can be counter productive and confusing when troubleshooting).
The power in structured design is a double edged sword. Simple tasks for a POC can become cumbersome. Ex. if you want to move some data to test a process, you first have to create your sources by importing them which means an ODBC connection or similar will need to be configured, you in turn have to develop your targets and all of the essential building blocks before being able to begin actual development. While I am on sources and targets, I think of a table definition as just that and find it counter intuitive to have to design a table as both a source and target and manage them as different objects. It would be more intuitive to have a table definition and its source/target properties defined by where you drag and drop it in the mapping.
There are no checkpoints or data viewer type functions without designing an entire mapping and workflow. If you would like to simply run a job up to a point and check the throughput, an entire mapping needs to be completed and you would workaround this by creating a flat file target.
ODI does not have an intuitive user interface. It is powerful, but difficult to figure out at first. There is a significant learning curve between usability, proficiency, and mastery of the tool.
ODI contains some frustrating bugs. It is Java based and has some caching issues, often requiring you to restart the program before you see your code changes stick.
ODI does not have a strong versioning process. It is not intuitive to keep an up to date repository of versioned code packages. This can create versioning issues between environments if you do not have a strong external code versioning process.
It is maturing and over time will have a good pool of resources. Each new version has addressed the issues of the previous ones. Its getting better and bigger.
Positives; - Multi User Development Environment - Speed of transformation - Seamless integration between other Informatica products. Negatives; - There should be less windows to maintain developers' focus while using. You probably need 2 big monitors when you start development with Informatica Power Center. - Oracle Analytical functions should be natively used. - E-LT support as well as ETL support.
Oracle Data Integrator (ODI) is a reliable ELT tool, supporting data loads from various heterogenous sources. It is effective both for structured as well as non structured data. Its works well for creating translations and transformation and also aids in the data quality checks when combined with an MDM solution. Troubleshooting issues can be of a challenge if it is not configured properly.
PowerCenter is robust and fast, and it does a great job meeting all the needs, not just the most commercially vocal needs. In the hands of an expert power user, you can accomplish almost anything with your data. It is not for new users or intermittent users-- for that the Cloud version is a better fit. Be prepared for costly connectors (priced differently for each source or destination you are working with), and just be planful of your projects so you are not paying for connectors you no longer need or want
Informatica power center is a leader of the pack of ETL tools and has some great abilities that make it stand out from other ETL tools. It has been a great partner to its clients over a long time so it's definitely dependable. With all the great things about Informatica, it has a bit of tech burden that should be addressed to make it more nimble, reduce the learning curve for new developers, provide better connectivity with visualization tools.
While Talend offers a much more comfortable interface to work with, Informatica's forte is performance. And on that front, Informatica Enterprise Data Integration certainly leaves Talend in the dust. For a more back-end-centric use case, Informatica is certainly the ETL tool of choice. On the other hand, if business users would be using the tool, then Talend would be the preferred tool.
I have used Trifacta Google Data Prep quite a bit. We use Google Cloud Platform across our organization. The tools are very comparable in what they offer. I would say Data Prep has a slight edge in usability and a cleaner UI, but both of the tools have comparable toolsets.
The data pipeline automation capability of Informatica means that few resources are needed to pre-process the data that ultimately resides in a Data Warehouse. Once a workflow is implemented, manual intervention is not needed.
PowerCenter did require more resources and time for installation and configuration than was expected/planned for.
The lack of or minimal support of unstructured data means that newer sources of dynamic/changing data cannot be easily processed/transformed through PowerCenter workflows.
