Likelihood to Recommend 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.
Read full review It helps our BUs analyze data and create dashboards they can understand. While slowing down with a large database, it becomes less helpful. In my experience, it is excellent in consolidating information from several sources for analysis, decision-making, and knowledge gaps. Excellent at managing information access.
Read full review Pros user experience makes it easy to work with SQL and version control customer success team and the dbt (data build tool) community help establish best practices thorough and clear documentation Read full review It integrates well with our current ecosystem of SAP products, like HANA. It provides end-to-end machine learning operations, with tools for the complete model life cycle. It has a simple user interface for novice users, with complex tools also available for power users. It builds on SAP Data Hub, providing all the ETL functions of that tool with additional machine learning functionality. It can run in the cloud, no on-premise software management needed. Many programming languages are supported, it provides a sandbox environment for the user to develop in whichever style they prefer. SAP is very actively developing and improving it. Read full review Cons 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 Read full review Data transfer speed tends to be slow when there is poor internet connection since SAP Data Intelligence don’t synchronize data while offline. However, this is not vendor fault, that’s why we have implemented robust wireless technology internet connection in our organization. Read full review Likelihood to Renew Allow collaborations among various personas with insights as ratings and comments on the datasets Reuse knowledges on the datasets for new users Next-Gen Data Management and Artificial Intelligence
Read full review Usability Good tool with lots of potential, but I still see a lot of room for improvement, e.g. when it comes to debugging functionality to understand exactly where pipelines fail and what the data at that point looks like (similar to BW debugging). Also, I am missing SAPs standard machine learning libraries (Python) to be pre-installed, among some other general usability improvements.
Read full review Support Rating Initially we struggle to get help from SAP but then dedicated Dev angel was assigned to us and that simplify the overall support scenario. There is still room of improvement in documentation around SAP Data intelligence. We struggle a lot to initially understand the feature and required help around performance improvement area,
Read full review Alternatives Considered 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.
Read full review One of the reasons to pick SAP Data Intelligence is the speed and security it provides, in addition to the excellent support it provides. It is also compatible with all popular databases, which is another reason to choose it.
Read full review Return on Investment Simplified our BI layer for faster load times Increased the quality of data reaching our end users Makes complex transformations manageable Read full review Automation of data management slashed tasks by over 60% in most departments for the first 8 months. Metadata catalogs have enabled us to categorize data from disjointed sources in one place. It runs multiple ML models which enhances flexibility when managing data. Read full review ScreenShots SAP Data Intelligence Screenshots