SQL Server Integration Services vs. Tableau Prep

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
SSIS
Score 8.4 out of 10
N/A
Microsoft's SQL Server Integration Services (SSIS) is a data integration solution.N/A
Tableau Prep
Score 8.5 out of 10
N/A
Tableau Prep enables users to get to the analysis phase faster by helping them quickly combine, shape, and clean their data. According to the vendor, a direct and visual experience helps provide users with a deeper understanding of their data, smart features make data preparation simple, and integration with the Tableau analytical workflow allows for faster speed to insight. Tableau Prep allows users to connect to data on-premises or in the cloud, whether it’s a database or a…
$15
per month billed annually per user
Pricing
SQL Server Integration ServicesTableau Prep
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
Viewer
$15
per month billed annually per user
Explorer
$42
per month billed annually per user
Creator
$70
per month billed annually per user
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
SSISTableau Prep
Free Trial
NoNo
Free/Freemium Version
NoNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional Details
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
SQL Server Integration ServicesTableau Prep
Top Pros
Top Cons
Features
SQL Server Integration ServicesTableau Prep
Data Source Connection
Comparison of Data Source Connection features of Product A and Product B
SQL Server Integration Services
7.5
53 Ratings
9% below category average
Tableau Prep
-
Ratings
Connect to traditional data sources8.853 Ratings00 Ratings
Connecto to Big Data and NoSQL6.240 Ratings00 Ratings
Data Transformations
Comparison of Data Transformations features of Product A and Product B
SQL Server Integration Services
8.1
53 Ratings
3% below category average
Tableau Prep
-
Ratings
Simple transformations8.553 Ratings00 Ratings
Complex transformations7.752 Ratings00 Ratings
Data Modeling
Comparison of Data Modeling features of Product A and Product B
SQL Server Integration Services
7.4
51 Ratings
9% below category average
Tableau Prep
-
Ratings
Data model creation8.627 Ratings00 Ratings
Metadata management7.133 Ratings00 Ratings
Business rules and workflow8.142 Ratings00 Ratings
Collaboration7.338 Ratings00 Ratings
Testing and debugging6.148 Ratings00 Ratings
Data Governance
Comparison of Data Governance features of Product A and Product B
SQL Server Integration Services
6.9
41 Ratings
17% below category average
Tableau Prep
-
Ratings
Integration with data quality tools7.436 Ratings00 Ratings
Integration with MDM tools6.536 Ratings00 Ratings
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SQL Server Integration ServicesTableau Prep
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Score 8.2 out of 10
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All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
SQL Server Integration ServicesTableau Prep
Likelihood to Recommend
8.0
(53 ratings)
9.0
(6 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
10.0
(3 ratings)
8.0
(1 ratings)
Usability
9.3
(8 ratings)
7.0
(1 ratings)
Performance
8.8
(6 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Support Rating
8.2
(7 ratings)
5.3
(3 ratings)
Implementation Rating
10.0
(1 ratings)
6.0
(1 ratings)
User Testimonials
SQL Server Integration ServicesTableau Prep
Likelihood to Recommend
Microsoft
Ideal for daily standard ETL use cases whether the data is sourced from / transferred to the native connectors (like SQL Server) or FTP. Best if the company uses MS suite of tools. There are better options in the market for chaining tasks where you want a custom flow of executions depending on the outcome of each process or if you want advanced functionality like API connections, etc.
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Tableau
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.
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Pros
Microsoft
  • Ease of use - can be used with no prior experience in a relatively short amount of time.
  • Flexibility - provides multiple means of accomplishing tasks to be able to support virtually any scenario.
  • Performance - performs well with default configurations but allows the user to choose a multitude of options that can enhance performance.
  • Resilient - supports the configuration of error handling to prevent and identify breakages.
  • Complete suite of configurable tools.
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Tableau
  • Display the raw data coming in from the data warehouse
  • Point out situations that might be erroneous
  • Show the distribution of raw data figures
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Cons
Microsoft
  • SSIS has been a bit neglected by Microsoft and new features are slow in coming.
  • When importing data from flat files and Excel workbooks, changes in the data structure will cause the extracts to fail. Workarounds do exist but are not easily implemented. If your source data structure does not change or rarely changes, this negative is relatively insignificant.
  • While add-on third-party SSIS tools exist, there are only a small number of vendors actively supporting SSIS and license fees for production server use can be significant especially in highly-scaled environments.
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Tableau
  • Use of Macros within Workflow (and more types of automation)
  • Join Editor also giving a SQL Update Query
  • More types of visuals
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Likelihood to Renew
Microsoft
Some features should be revised or improved, some tools (using it with Visual Studio) of the toolbox should be less schematic and somewhat more flexible. Using for example, the CSV data import is still very old-fashioned and if the data format changes it requires a bit of manual labor to accept the new data structure
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Tableau
It is a valuable tool for generating and cleaning files for multiple purposes.
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Usability
Microsoft
SQL Server Integration Services is a relatively nice tool but is simply not the ETL for a global, large-scale organization. With developing requirements such as NoSQL data, cloud-based tools, and extraordinarily large databases, SSIS is no longer our tool of choice.
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Tableau
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.
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Performance
Microsoft
Raw performance is great. At times, depending on the machine you are using for development, the IDE can have issues. Deploying projects is very easy and the tool set they give you to monitor jobs out of the box is decent. If you do very much with it you will have to write into your projects performance tracking though.
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Tableau
No answers on this topic
Support Rating
Microsoft
The support, when necessary, is excellent. But beyond that, it is very rarely necessary because the user community is so large, vibrant and knowledgable, a simple Google query or forum question can answer almost everything you want to know. You can also get prewritten script tasks with a variety of functionality that saves a lot of time.
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Tableau
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.
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Implementation Rating
Microsoft
The implementation may be different in each case, it is important to properly analyze all the existing infrastructure to understand the kind of work needed, the type of software used and the compatibility between these, the features that you want to exploit, to understand what is possible and which ones require integration with third-party tools
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Tableau
Live connections to cloud services (Google Sheets for example) and cloud hosted databases (cloud hosted SIS for example) for scheduled flows are not supported
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Alternatives Considered
Microsoft
I had nothing to do with the choice or install. I assume it was made because it's easy to integrate with our SQL Server environment and free. I'm not sure of any other enterprise level solution that would solve this problem, but I would likely have approached it with traditional scripting. Comparably free, but my own familiarity with trad scripts would be my final deciding factor. Perhaps with some further training on SSIS I would have a different answer.
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Tableau
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.
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Return on Investment
Microsoft
  • Data integrity across various products allows unify certain processes inside the organization and save funds by reducing human labour factor.
  • Automated data unification allows us plan our inputs better and reduce over-warehousing by overbuying
  • The employee number, responsible for data management was reduced from 4 to 1 person
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Tableau
  • 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)
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