Qlik Replicate enables organizations to accelerate data real-time replication, ingestion and streaming via change data capture, across a wide range of heterogeneous databases, data warehouses and data lake platforms.
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SolarWinds Task Factory
Score 8.3 out of 10
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According to the vendor, SolarWinds Task Factory saves time managing tedious ELT/ETL tasks with high-performing SQL Server Integration Services (SSIS) components that can be used within the Visual Studio environment to connect to nearly any data source. Task Factory’s components and tasks have been optimized to ensure fast performance of data-centric applications, and the user can run Task Factory…
Qlik Replicate works very well with relational data platforms, both on premise and in the cloud, for example Oracle, SQL Server, PostgreSQL, MySQL and others, it also works very well with DB2. If the data source is MongoDB, it is more complicated and currently there is no possibility of sending data to MongoDB.
Since I started working with this great tool all data analysis programs have been running effectively. Implementation of projects and tasks have been effective and reliable. Data collected from each department gives us working plan on better management of various programs. The Dimension Merge SCD Transform helps us to load large volumes of data within a short period of time.
Replicate is extremely stable and does not generate a lot of alerts/failures/issues that take up time to troubleshoot.
It is very easy to add new source tables to a Replicate task so that we're always in sync with new data available from the CRM.
It's nice that Qlik Replicate also allows you to create a job to stop and then restart your tasks during maintenance windows that occur on both the source and target systems.
The single most beneficial component to Task Factory is the Upsert component. If you're familiar with writing MERGE statements in T-SQL, you'll appreciate the Upsert component. Drag the component into your Data Flow and a few clicks later you have a MERGE without the code complexities.
Where some native SSIS components leave you wanting more, Task Factory extends on many of these components as well as support for data sources not native to SSIS components.
The number of extra components that come in the Task Factory tool kit will expand your tool belt to do just about anything you need or want to accomplish in SSIS.
The base Replicate web GUI is lacking. If you have dozens or more tasks, it's hard to get a sense of how they're performing. Enterprise Manager solves all of these problems but is a separate install.
The support portal is extremely difficult to navigate. It's hard to track down exactly what you're looking for.
It would be helpful to have better documentation and example queries for the tables in the Enterprise Manager analytics database.
Destination databases that don't support common DDL commands behave unpredictably. And the replication of schema changes isn't consistent.
It was built by Pragmatic Works who sold it to SentryOne and now Solar Winds, concerned about future support. SolarWinds is discontinuing support for related products such as BiXpress.
Had issues with connecting to certain versions of SQL Server - would fail when deploying one package - had to deploy the entire solutions.
Occasional random failures observed with the Filter tranform.
The availability of the replicated data in disparate environments has is now crucial. Replacing a product like Qlik Replicate would require significant time, investments, and work. In addition, Qlik Replicate is reasonably reliable with few failures.
Task Factory has become a key product for our use of doing ETL work in SSIS. Their custom SSIS components allow us to work simply on the data engineering side of things. We can ignore the lower level work needed to connect to disparate data sources. This allows us to work faster and provide more value to the business
We now have greater business flexibility and scalability, and our big data integration projects have a quick rate of growth, which has been profitable for us. Independent of the sources involved, maintaining data consistency between sources is easy. One of my favorite features is the way it lets owners of the source system start and stop processes from updating their system windows.
The issue I've had is that Qlik does an awful job of keeping their customers informed when new versions of the software are available. We found that we were using a version that was no longer supported and could never get help. When it came time to get us upgraded so that we were on a current version, no one knew how to help get us to where we needed to be. We had to purchased professional services time and even then I was basically on my own to get everything built out and set up. Qlik needs to be more proactive with communicating about new releases and how to get your version upgraded in the most secure, safe way possible.
Overall, the best vendor we currently have on the data side of the house. No issues, issues are resolved very quickly and upgrades go without any issues.
Follow the directions from the Qlik documentation. They are pretty straight forward and easy enough to follow. If you follow these, then you are not likely to have issues on implementation.
Great tool for data replication solution for Oracle/SQLServers/etc. Real easy to get it set up and start realizing business value. Getting the PoC accomplished in a short window. Product costing and easy to start small and scale as needed. It helped cover most of our ask compared to other solutions.
ZappySys is an alternative provider that we tested. However, we found the ease of use, set up and installation to be much simplier and quicker using Task Factory. ZappySys has a number of the same connectors but are more difficult to setup and the GUI is not as intuitive and simple to use.
Prior to using Qlik Replicate, we used an ETL solution to copy data from the Oracle ERP system to the Microsoft SQL Server BI system at a 15-minute interval. It was very tedious to maintain. Qlik Replicate is much easier to use and we replicate data near real-time now.
We were able to support our developers with Task Factory features and reduce the development time by 40%.
Recently Task Factory has changed their pricing module and it seems to be pretty costly for our process. Our business team has started to evaluate whether this is worth it going forward.
