Oracle Data Integrator (ODI) vs. SAP NetWeaver MDM

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

Fairly easy to set up and get started even in large enterprises with the help of the configuration tools that come with the product. Also, the workflow engine can be defined with relative ease and monitored. Perhaps this product works very well in an SAP environment as it can be integrated with other SAP products

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

• SAP MDM comes with a workflow engine that can be used by the business to define workflows, run workflows and monitor workflows
• SAP MDM also enables to create, read, update, and delete master data well across the organization
• With proper setup, it has helped prevent bad master data in the production environment

Incentivized

• 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

• HANA is used for consolidation and there is adequate room for improvement in the consolidation function
• Business users can also contribute to improving the business workflows if there were a simple wizard set up for this purpose - at present, contributions are made through IT ticketing system

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 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

IBM Infosphere was considered but was much more expensive and also perhaps would have taken more time for initial setup. SAP MDM was selected because we found it easier to work with other SAP products and its ability to integrate well within the overall larger SAP environment and was also easier to configure.

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

• A positive impact from an ability to leverage a single master data across the entire organization
• A positive impact from an ability to prevent bad master data in production
• Not a negative but could have been easier with a wizard set up for users to contribute to modify rules

Incentivized