CData DBAmp vs. SQL Server Integration Services

Well suited as an inexpensive tool as "middleware" between your on-prem or hosted SQL Server. Not sure how well it will translate to cloud-based SQL as a platform (Azure SQL) as it relies on linked servers. This tool only applies to Salesforce CRM - not Marketing Cloud. For writing back to Salesforce we did run into Salesforce resource limitations when extensive triggers existed on the objects.

Incentivized

Ideal for daily standard ETL use cases whether the data is sourced from / transferred to the native connectors (like SQL Server) or FTP. Best if the company uses MS suite of tools. There are better options in the market for chaining tasks where you want a custom flow of executions depending on the outcome of each process or if you want advanced functionality like API connections, etc.

Incentivized

• Connects & Links to Salesforce CRM databases - including custom objects.
• Built in procedures to create copies of the database on SQL Server.
• Built in procedures to Add, Update, and Delete data within Salesforce CRM.
• Great Technical Support.

Incentivized

• Ease of use - can be used with no prior experience in a relatively short amount of time.
• Flexibility - provides multiple means of accomplishing tasks to be able to support virtually any scenario.
• Performance - performs well with default configurations but allows the user to choose a multitude of options that can enhance performance.
• Resilient - supports the configuration of error handling to prevent and identify breakages.
• Complete suite of configurable tools.

Incentivized

• Because it uses Linked Servers, not sure how this will work in Azure SQL.
• Replicated tables are based on user security - this means you have to pay for a license to set this up.
• There is no built-in function to skip tables or fields on secured tables. This has to be done on the CRM side for fields and we built a function to skip tables in the replication logic.

Incentivized

• SSIS has been a bit neglected by Microsoft and new features are slow in coming.
• When importing data from flat files and Excel workbooks, changes in the data structure will cause the extracts to fail. Workarounds do exist but are not easily implemented. If your source data structure does not change or rarely changes, this negative is relatively insignificant.
• While add-on third-party SSIS tools exist, there are only a small number of vendors actively supporting SSIS and license fees for production server use can be significant especially in highly-scaled environments.

Incentivized

Some features should be revised or improved, some tools (using it with Visual Studio) of the toolbox should be less schematic and somewhat more flexible. Using for example, the CSV data import is still very old-fashioned and if the data format changes it requires a bit of manual labor to accept the new data structure

Incentivized

SQL Server Integration Services is a relatively nice tool but is simply not the ETL for a global, large-scale organization. With developing requirements such as NoSQL data, cloud-based tools, and extraordinarily large databases, SSIS is no longer our tool of choice.

Incentivized

Raw performance is great. At times, depending on the machine you are using for development, the IDE can have issues. Deploying projects is very easy and the tool set they give you to monitor jobs out of the box is decent. If you do very much with it you will have to write into your projects performance tracking though.

Incentivized

The support, when necessary, is excellent. But beyond that, it is very rarely necessary because the user community is so large, vibrant and knowledgable, a simple Google query or forum question can answer almost everything you want to know. You can also get prewritten script tasks with a variety of functionality that saves a lot of time.

Incentivized

The implementation may be different in each case, it is important to properly analyze all the existing infrastructure to understand the kind of work needed, the type of software used and the compatibility between these, the features that you want to exploit, to understand what is possible and which ones require integration with third-party tools

Incentivized

I had nothing to do with the choice or install. I assume it was made because it's easy to integrate with our SQL Server environment and free. I'm not sure of any other enterprise level solution that would solve this problem, but I would likely have approached it with traditional scripting. Comparably free, but my own familiarity with trad scripts would be my final deciding factor. Perhaps with some further training on SSIS I would have a different answer.

Incentivized

• Enabled automated marketing segments which enabled automated email series.
• Helped us solicit donations for the right amount at the right time.
• Helped us take on new marketing and fundraising campaigns without adding staff.

Incentivized

• Data integrity across various products allows unify certain processes inside the organization and save funds by reducing human labour factor.
• Automated data unification allows us plan our inputs better and reduce over-warehousing by overbuying
• The employee number, responsible for data management was reduced from 4 to 1 person

Incentivized