Oracle Data Integrator (ODI) vs. Pentaho

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.

Incentivized

Pentaho is very well suited to perform data extraction & data mining from various cloud storage & transform that data using various available data models. However, the software struggles when it comes to visualizing the extracted data in an appealing manner & can be difficult for end-users to get an understanding of data tables created using those models.

Incentivized

• 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.

Incentivized

• Integrate and synchronize with big data easily
• Import data from any sources and different databases
• Managing data in on-premise, hybrid and cloud environments.
• Compatibility and flexibility of the platform with any type of scenario and any business or industry
• Various tools in the software suite to transformation of data
• Simple interface appearance and creative UI graphics

• 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.

Incentivized

• I think the relative obscurity of the tool is a downside, not as many developers, consultants or peers you can tap into.
• Lack of a solid user community held us back, looking at Power BI and Qlik, they have huge user communities that help each other out. Would have liked that here.
• Smaller company means smaller sales force, and the lack of a local presence made it hard to only interact online with the account rep. Other companies have someone local who often stops by with pre-sales developers to just pitch in free of charge when they have time.

Incentivized

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.

I will use Pentaho until I find a better tool with a better, easier to use report designer client. For now, Pentaho has been the most powerful reporting tool for our clients because of its ability to connect to Odoo, integrate in Odoo (reports are accessible in Odoo) and the flexibility in report design and parameter integration

Incentivized

The Pentaho tools are designed so you can start playing around on your own. Of course, you will need guidance at some point, but the training teams are good at guiding new users, and the online documentation is usually pretty up-to-date.

Some of the tools, such as the Pentaho Data Integration tool and the Pentaho Server, are pretty self-explanatory. The other tools maybe are not so quickly and obvious to use, but again, with some documentation and some customer support, you can find your way around them.

Incentivized

They were responsive to our questions when we raised issues. They gave us workarounds when required. They were quite knowledgeable when it came to issue analysis and providing fixes. They were forthright in informing us if a bug was not due for release soon.

Incentivized

Course Taken: DI1000 Pentaho Data Integration Fundamentals Setup A week before your class started, the instructor will start sending out class material and lab setup instructions. This is helpful so that you understand how the environment is laid out and can start reviewing the content. Ultimately it saved about a 1/2 day trying to setup with 10 other people online which was great! The Course The 3-day course was laid out like many other technical classes with 15-30 minutes instruction and 15-60 minutes of lab exercises. The instructor was very knowledgeable with the functionality from version to version and answered questions as we went along. I was amazed at some of the functionality that was available that I was not using at the time and quickly implemented changes to many existing transformations and jobs. The novice users seemed to catch on quickly and more experienced users explained how some of the functionality was used in their home environments. Towards the end there was enough time so that we were able to ask very directed questions about our own environments. Overall, I really found the class to be informative and deliver enough information to be dangerous. My skills improved and I was able to design better and efficient transformations for the HIE. Course Description: https://training.pentaho.com/instructor-led-training/pentaho-data-integration-fundamentals-di1000

Get the right people in before starting implementation. Start small and build as you go approach is time consuming and involves lot of rework. Evangalize within the organization the capabilities and limitations equally so that correct delivery expectations are set. Set expectations with the Customer that the tool cannot replace proprietary software in terms of stability/usability and that timelines could change given the new ness of the product.

Incentivized

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.

Incentivized

Since the Pentaho platform offers a range of broad functionality across data preparation and advanced analytics, it also can be easily integrated to support many data sources and machine-learning frameworks. Based on that fact, we selected Pentaho to be used in our internal department. It also supports many of our BI use cases as required by company management or the business user. Last but not least, the Pentaho license is cheaper than their competitor.

Incentivized

• From a business intelligence perspective, it allows us to provide users with the necessary data and information to make informed decisions.
• Compared with other Oracle products and licensing, I do not think the pricing was unreasonable.
• It is part of a larger install, so for ease of use, we purchased it with other Oracle products.

Incentivized

• Pentaho has improved our overall business process.
• Pentaho has helped the Managers and Directors to analyze the numbers going up and down from time to time.
• We have a started a big project using Pentaho that is going to include all the business processes in the organization.

Incentivized