Likelihood to Recommend 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.
Read full review If your data sets are coming in without much stewardship then
Tableau Prep can help to clean the data before you start trying to create visualizations for your end users. You will save a lot of time this way - rather than seeing problems once you are creating dashboards. If you don't have large data sets or your data is relatively simple, then
Tableau Prep may not be needed.
Read full review Pros 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. Read full review Display the raw data coming in from the data warehouse Point out situations that might be erroneous Show the distribution of raw data figures Read full review Cons 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. Read full review Use of Macros within Workflow (and more types of automation) Join Editor also giving a SQL Update Query More types of visuals Read full review Likelihood to Renew 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.
Read full review It is a valuable tool for generating and cleaning files for multiple purposes.
Read full review Usability It works well and is user friendly for the basics but needs more options for bring in data (using SQL queries for example) and export format options.
Read full review Support Rating I have not really had to reach out for any kind of customer support for
Tableau Prep, so I can't really say. However, the support that
Tableau has given for their other products has been great, so I would assume it would be the same here. They are also constantly adding new features and providing software updates, and that is always a plus.
Read full review Implementation Rating Live connections to cloud services (Google Sheets for example) and cloud hosted databases (cloud hosted SIS for example) for scheduled flows are not supported
Read full review Alternatives Considered 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.
Read full review Before Prep, we had to do all the data joining and connecting in a
Tableau Workbook. Not only did this cause workbooks connected with live data to run frustratingly slowly, a new connection and set-up had to be established every time a new workbook as created, even if you were working with the same data. The extracts produced by Prep allow several workbooks to be working from the same data set-up without any additional work, saving time and stress.
Read full review Return on Investment 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. Read full review Quicker data sets for online reports More efficient data cleaning Ad Hoc reports Costly if using data management to schedule data pull and cleaning (priced per viewer accounts not creator accounts) Read full review ScreenShots