Informatica PowerCenter (legacy) vs. Oracle Data Integrator (ODI)

Informatica Powercenter is the centerpiece of our overall enterprise data warehouse strategy. It's a critical enablement to ensure we can feed in multiple data stream and transform them into digestible data within our data warehouse. With its flexible capabilities and API availability, we were able to feed in industry standard data format as well as home grown data structure. Overall, we are very pleased with their capability and contribution to our data warehouse strategy.

Incentivized

I tried various ETL tools and here is [where and] why I recommend Oracle Data Integrator. 1. When you want to process structured data from different databases - Teradata, Exadata, DB2, SQL, Oracle etc. 2. Oracle Data Integrator supports all platforms, hardware, and OS. This is a major advantage compared to other leading tools. 3. The ELT architecture giving a cutting edge performance over leading ETL tools. There is no need to align Oracle Data Integrator between source and target. ODI uses the source and target servers to perform complex transformations. 4. Speeds up the development and maintenance by reducing the code that developers need to write

Incentivized

• Informatica has a wide range of support for databases. Pretty much every mainstream DBMS is compatible here.
• Designing ETL mappings and workflows is a very intuitive process, and takes minimal learning time and effort even for a beginner.
• Informatica's biggest strength is its sheer performance. It is unmatched in terms of handling large volumes of data.

Incentivized

• Converts data from various sources into one target format using various business logic rules and integrates with various DBMS types.
• Transformed data from DB2, SQL Server and other Oracle databases into flat files and then used ETL jobs to load into Oracle DB target
• Data Integrator and Goldengate were used together to accomplish the data movement needed for business and data consolidation in live environment. Data Integrator helped with development and in reducing lead time to convert data into target.

Incentivized

• One of the challenges of PowerCenter is the lack of integration between the components and functionality provided by PowerCenter. PowerCenter consists of multiple components such has the repository service, integration service, metadata service. Considerable time and resources were required to install and configure these components before PowerCenter was available for use.
• In order to connect to various data sources such as Netezza database or SAS datasets, PowerCenter requires the installation and configuration of separate plug-ins. We spent considerable time trouble-shooting and debugging problems while trying to get the various plug-ins integrated with PowerCenter and get them up and running as described in the documentation.
• PowerCenter works well with structured data. That is, it is easy to work with input and output data that is pre-defined, fixed, and unchanging. It is much more difficult to work with dynamic data in which new fields are added or removed ad-hoc or if data format changes during the data ingest process. We have not been as successful in using PowerCenter for dynamic data.
• One of the challenges of learning PowerCenter is that it is difficult to find documentation or publications that help you learn the various details about PowerCenter software. Unlike SAS Institute, Informatica does not publish books about PowerCenter. The documentation available with PowerCenter is sparse; we have learned many aspects of this technology through trial and error.

Incentivized

• Oracle support is not the best when needing help with the system
• The documentation is also very poor and takes very long to generate
• Some parts of it are not intuitive to use and get hard to troubleshoot
• Like other Oracle products, you must have very, very thorough knowledge about their systems to understand
• Like all Oracle products, cost is high

Incentivized

Our team enjoys using Informatica and feels that it is one of the best ETL tools on the market.

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.

The tool is very flexible and will meet most, if not all, of your data transformation needs. It is an expert-level tool, so building your knowledge-base and user-base (and keeping that base healthy!) is very important. But it will pay off with strong data management and the ability to leverage that data in ways you haven’t thought of yet. Bottom line, data is money, and PowerCenter helps you monetize your data.

Incentivized

Positives; - Multi-user development environment. - The speed of transformation. - Seamless integration with other Informatica products. Negatives; - There should be fewer windows, to maintain developers' focus while using. You probably need two 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.

Incentivized

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.

Incentivized

Basically the two solutions have, more or less, the same functions and features.The difference, for me, is that ThreatQuotient make more features over the security and I think is oriented to a SOC enviroments. InformaticaExchange Connectors is oriented to the quality, integration and distribution of the data in order to ensure the reliability and access of data from different sources, as well as the integration in a single repository of enterprise data (External/internal)

Incentivized

Talend Data Integrator has been evaluated during the setup of the architecture for a customer, in comparison to ODI, since it's an open source ETL. But, differently from the meaning of "open source", it has licence costs too that aren't that different from ODI ones. Moreover, the other components of the business intelligence architecture of the customer were Oracle, so we thought that ODI would suit at best with them, more than a different vendor software.

Incentivized

• PowerCenter has been instrumental in being the center of all data movement within the organization.
• It has also provided a foundation for which re-usability and scalability are the focus.
• Finding talent with experience and expertise in PowerCenter is far more likely due to its presence and market share.

Incentivized

• Oracle Data Integrator helps provide a business with the data it needs to defend the decisions it makes.
• Oracle Data Integrator allows you to analyze data from what can be separate, different, and often outdated data sources. It allows you to make direct comparisons when analyzing data from different pieces of equipment.
• Data from Oracle Data Integrator was used to analyze manufacturing quality and drive down spoilage, saving the company money.

Incentivized