Microsoft's Azure Data Factory is a service built for all data integration needs and skill levels. It is designed to allow the user to easily construct ETL and ELT processes code-free within the intuitive visual environment, or write one's own code. Visually integrate data sources using more than 80 natively built and maintenance-free connectors at no added cost. Focus on data—the serverless integration service does the rest.
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Qlik Replicate
Score 8.4 out of 10
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Qlik Replicate enables organizations to accelerate data real-time replication, ingestion and streaming via change data capture, across a wide range of heterogeneous databases, data warehouses and data lake platforms.
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Pricing
Azure Data Factory
Qlik Replicate
Editions & Modules
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Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Azure Data Factory
Qlik Replicate
Free Trial
No
Yes
Free/Freemium Version
No
No
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
No
Yes
Entry-level Setup Fee
No setup fee
Required
Additional Details
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More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
Azure Data Factory
Qlik Replicate
Considered Both Products
Azure Data Factory
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Qlik Replicate
Verified User
Employee
Chose Qlik Replicate
Qlik Replicate is fast and easy. ADF can do a wider variety of things
Well-suited Scenarios for Azure Data Factory (ADF): When an organization has data sources spread across on-premises databases and cloud storage solutions, I think Azure Data Factory is excellent for integrating these sources. Azure Data Factory's integration with Azure Databricks allows it to handle large-scale data transformations effectively, leveraging the power of distributed processing. For regular ETL or ELT processes that need to run at specific intervals (daily, weekly, etc.), I think Azure Data Factory's scheduling capabilities are very handy. Less Appropriate Scenarios for Azure Data Factory: Real-time Data Streaming - Azure Data Factory is primarily batch-oriented. Simple Data Copy Tasks - For straightforward data copy tasks without the need for transformation or complex workflows, in my opinion, using Azure Data Factory might be overkill; simpler tools or scripts could suffice. Advanced Data Science Workflows: While Azure Data Factory can handle data prep and transformation, in my experience, it's not designed for in-depth data science tasks. I think for advanced analytics, machine learning, or statistical modeling, integration with specialized tools would be necessary.
Qlik Replicate works very well with relational data platforms, both on premise and in the cloud, for example Oracle, SQL Server, PostgreSQL, MySQL and others, it also works very well with DB2. If the data source is MongoDB, it is more complicated and currently there is no possibility of sending data to MongoDB.
It allows copying data from various types of data sources like on-premise files, Azure Database, Excel, JSON, Azure Synapse, API, etc. to the desired destination.
We can use linked service in multiple pipeline/data load.
It also allows the running of SSIS & SSMS packages which makes it an easy-to-use ETL & ELT tool.
Replicate is extremely stable and does not generate a lot of alerts/failures/issues that take up time to troubleshoot.
It is very easy to add new source tables to a Replicate task so that we're always in sync with new data available from the CRM.
It's nice that Qlik Replicate also allows you to create a job to stop and then restart your tasks during maintenance windows that occur on both the source and target systems.
The base Replicate web GUI is lacking. If you have dozens or more tasks, it's hard to get a sense of how they're performing. Enterprise Manager solves all of these problems but is a separate install.
The support portal is extremely difficult to navigate. It's hard to track down exactly what you're looking for.
It would be helpful to have better documentation and example queries for the tables in the Enterprise Manager analytics database.
Destination databases that don't support common DDL commands behave unpredictably. And the replication of schema changes isn't consistent.
The availability of the replicated data in disparate environments has is now crucial. Replacing a product like Qlik Replicate would require significant time, investments, and work. In addition, Qlik Replicate is reasonably reliable with few failures.
So far product has performed as expected. We were noticing some performance issues, but they were largely Synapse related. This has led to a shift from Synapse to Databricks. Overall this has delayed our analytic platform. Once databricks becomes fully operational, Azure Data Factory will be critical to our environment and future success.
We now have greater business flexibility and scalability, and our big data integration projects have a quick rate of growth, which has been profitable for us. Independent of the sources involved, maintaining data consistency between sources is easy. One of my favorite features is the way it lets owners of the source system start and stop processes from updating their system windows.
We have not had need to engage with Microsoft much on Azure Data Factory, but they have been responsive and helpful when needed. This being said, we have not had a major emergency or outage requiring their intervention. The score of seven is a representation that they have done well for now, but have not proved out their support for a significant issue
The issue I've had is that Qlik does an awful job of keeping their customers informed when new versions of the software are available. We found that we were using a version that was no longer supported and could never get help. When it came time to get us upgraded so that we were on a current version, no one knew how to help get us to where we needed to be. We had to purchased professional services time and even then I was basically on my own to get everything built out and set up. Qlik needs to be more proactive with communicating about new releases and how to get your version upgraded in the most secure, safe way possible.
Follow the directions from the Qlik documentation. They are pretty straight forward and easy enough to follow. If you follow these, then you are not likely to have issues on implementation.
The easy integration with other Microsoft software as well as high processing speed, very flexible cost, and high level of security of Microsoft Azure products and services stack up against other similar products.
Great tool for data replication solution for Oracle/SQLServers/etc. Real easy to get it set up and start realizing business value. Getting the PoC accomplished in a short window. Product costing and easy to start small and scale as needed. It helped cover most of our ask compared to other solutions.
Prior to using Qlik Replicate, we used an ETL solution to copy data from the Oracle ERP system to the Microsoft SQL Server BI system at a 15-minute interval. It was very tedious to maintain. Qlik Replicate is much easier to use and we replicate data near real-time now.
