My Astera experience
It is used by the software development department. We are using this for the ETL process to move and transform the data from one data …
Overview
What is Astera Centerprise?
Centerprise Data Integrator is an integration platform that includes tools for data integration, data transformation, data quality, and data profiling.
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Popular Features
- Business rules and workflow (28)9.999%
- Simple transformations (32)9.999%
- Connect to traditional data sources (31)9.090%
- Complex transformations (30)7.373%
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Centerprise Enterprise
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- No setup fee
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- Free Trial
- Free/Freemium Version
- Premium Consulting/Integration Services
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What is Astera Centerprise?
Astera Centerprise is a complete data integration solution that includes data integration, data transformation, data quality, and data profiling capabilities in a code-free environment, and promises to enable business users to handle data with minimal IT support. Centerprise enables users to exchange data with a wide range of supported applications, databases, and formats.
Astera Centerprise Features
Data Source Connection Features
- Supported: Connect to traditional data sources
Data Transformations Features
- Supported: Simple transformations
- Supported: Complex transformations
Data Modeling Features
- Supported: Data model creation
- Supported: Business rules and workflow
- Supported: Testing and debugging
Additional Features
- Supported: Integrated development environment
- Supported: Data quality and profiling
- Supported: Job flow, scheduling, and execution
- Supported: Extensibility and openness
- Supported: Performance and scalability
- Supported: Ease of use for business users
Astera Centerprise Screenshots
Astera Centerprise Integrations
- Microsoft SQL Server
- SAP Adaptive Server Enterprise (ASE), legacy
- ReadyAPI
- SAP CRM discontinued
- Salesforce Sales Cloud
- MySQL
- Microsoft Dynamics 365
- Salesforce
- Oracle
- Netezza
- Teradata
- XML
- Excel
- X12
- PRN
- IBM DB2
- REST
- ODBC
- Ole DB
- Delimited
- flat
- fixed length files
- COBOL
- HIPAA
- JSON
Astera Centerprise Competitors
Astera Centerprise Technical Details
| Deployment Types | On-premise |
|---|---|
| Operating Systems | Windows |
| Mobile Application | No |
| Supported Countries | USA |
| Supported Languages | English |
Frequently Asked Questions
Centerprise Data Integrator is an integration platform that includes tools for data integration, data transformation, data quality, and data profiling.
Informatica Intelligent Cloud Integration Services, Adeptia Connect, and Talend Data Integration are common alternatives for Astera Centerprise.
Reviewers rate Simple transformations and Data model creation and Business rules and workflow highest, with a score of 9.9.
The most common users of Astera Centerprise are from Mid-sized Companies (51-1,000 employees).
Astera Centerprise Customer Size Distribution
| Consumers | 0% |
|---|---|
| Small Businesses (1-50 employees) | 11% |
| Mid-Size Companies (51-500 employees) | 47% |
| Enterprises (more than 500 employees) | 42% |
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(54)
Community Insights
TrustRadius Insights are summaries of user sentiment data from TrustRadius reviews and, when necessary, 3rd-party data sources. Have feedback on this content? Let us know!
- Business Problems Solved
- Pros
- Cons
Astera Centerprise is a versatile and affordable data integration tool that has proven to be highly valuable in various use cases. Users have found that the software is commonly used to generate files from a data warehouse in proprietary formats and send them to vendors. It is also utilized for automated report generation, inventory alerts, and scheduled email tasks. Additionally, Astera Centerprise is often employed for ETL processes, allowing for seamless movement and transformation of data between different sources based on specific business rules.
One of the key use cases of Astera Centerprise is syncing a legacy database to a more web-friendly database, which requires the creation of a custom database driver. Users have successfully leveraged the software for this purpose. Another significant use case is integrating Salesforce with various ERP systems, providing an intuitive user interface for exchanging data between these platforms. Furthermore, Astera Centerprise has been instrumental in providing visibility into issues with moving data from legacy systems to the application's database, reducing both time and technical skills required.
The software simplifies the process of building integrations and small tasks through its drag-and-drop GUI and wide range of data connections and functions. For instance, it is widely used for importing data into Microsoft Dynamics AX, Salesforce, and other in-house built applications, making it easier to map and integrate the data. Moreover, Astera Centerprise streamlines data integration processes by enabling analysts to connect to various data sources and perform complex transformations seamlessly.
The software finds application in diverse domains such as finance, healthcare, agriculture, and manufacturing. For example, it serves as a key component for consolidating financial data from different sources into a single view for corporate finance groups. It also plays a critical role in integrating electronic health record systems with other systems in the healthcare sector. Across organizations, Astera Centerprise is widely used for importing and exporting data from application databases efficiently, saving significant time. Additionally, the software is valued for its ability to manipulate and map data based on client requirements, enabling users to synchronize data between ecommerce solutions and ERP systems effectively.
Intuitive Interface: Multiple users have praised the intuitive interface of Centerprise, stating that it is easy to understand and navigate. They have mentioned that after becoming familiar with the interface, they were able to quickly start using the tool.
Self-Documenting Graphical Approach: Many reviewers appreciate Centerprise's self-documenting graphical approach for building data flows. This feature allows new team members to easily understand existing work, saving time and promoting collaboration.
Data Preview Capability: The ability to preview data on each object within Centerprise has been highly valued by users. Being able to immediately see transformation results at any point in a data flow has not only saved them time but also facilitated data reconciliation processes.
Confusing User Interface: Several users have found the user interface of the software to be confusing and difficult to follow, making tasks more challenging. They have expressed frustration with navigating through the different features and options, resulting in a steep learning curve.
Issues with Software Updates: Users have encountered various issues during software updates, including bugs and changes to existing functionality. Some reviewers mentioned that these updates were not seamless and caused disruptions in their workflows. They had to spend time troubleshooting and adapting to the changes, which was inconvenient for them.
Performance Issues with Large Datasets: Some users have experienced performance issues when working with large datasets. They reported slowdowns and delays while processing extensive amounts of data. However, they were able to find workarounds by optimizing their workflows or breaking down the datasets into smaller chunks for better performance.
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Reviews
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January 23, 2024
Astera Centerprise Review
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Astera Centerprise is being used by the IT Application Department in Aspen Medical Products. It is being used to integrate the Magento eCommerce platform to host the company's website with ERP Application (IQMS). I've been using the Astera Centerprise for the last 5 years to create Integration Dataflows, Workflows, Scheduled jobs to integrate the Magento and IQMS APIs. These jobs run round the clock from 4 am till midnight 7 days a week to keep the data flowing between the applications. The data includes customers orders, customer's account setups, address information updates, Credit limit updates, Customer's product pricing updates, etc...
- API integrations vis REST Web Service transformation
- Stored Procedure integration via SQL statement Lookup transformation
- Bulk imports and exports to and from tables
- Data dumps from SQL tables to excel, csv, text files etc...
- EDI Integrations like 810, 856, 940, 945 etc.. via Astera Centerprise Data Integrator plus EDI Connect
- I would say Server Monitor is not very user-friendly. Astera [Centerprise] can add sorting features on different columns to make it more intuitive
- The search box in server monitor doesn't display the the way I expect.
- Astera CDI can add Temp tables object to store staging/temporary data instead of using excel or data files.
March 15, 2023
Excellent Tool
We are using Astera Centerprise for automatically capturing data from PDF files and uploading to different databases. We are also using this for integration of different systems, data comparison, data validation, data extraction, and data transformation.
We initially purchased Astera Centerprise for us to automatically capture and load data from PDF documents to improve our data quality. With all the available functions in Centerprise, we expanded to different areas and continue to grow in terms of application. We also continue to work with Astera support group on possible improvements and functionalities.
We initially purchased Astera Centerprise for us to automatically capture and load data from PDF documents to improve our data quality. With all the available functions in Centerprise, we expanded to different areas and continue to grow in terms of application. We also continue to work with Astera support group on possible improvements and functionalities.
- Data parsing from PDF
- Data transformation
- Data loading
- Data validation
- Data migration/ transfer of data between systems
- Data Comparison
- Extraction of data from HTML
- Data extraction from websites
- Can you look at front end handling similar to RPA
- Allow generation of formatted output files in PDF or MS word
- Allow formatting of MS excel output files (highlighting of cells, underlining of values)
March 07, 2023
A back office gem whose power is in the simplicity
We leverage the tool to perform ETL (Extraction, Transforming and Loading) of new customer data into our application's database. The problem it solved is providing the visibility to issues with moving the data from a legacy system database into our system. Plus, we can reuse the projects when implementing future customers from the same legacy system. Having this feature tremendously reduces the time and technical skills required to move the data.
- Option to copy an entire project to reuse it for similar but new situations
- Option to "write SQL" when it really is simply easier
- Ability to Preview the data before actually pushing it
- Ability to implement rules or honor database-level rules
- Ability to quickly get exports of data snippets for 3rd party review of the data
- The ability to use AI to "connect" the data through
- The ability to have teams working on the same project at the same time
- Having more "undo" options
January 16, 2023
Solid ETL solutions
We use Astera Centerprise for many various projects. Examples would include automated report generation, inventory alerts and scheduled email tasks. The main project we chose Astera Centerprise for was to sync what we hope will be a legacy database (SQL Anywhere by SAP) to a more web friendly database (MYSQL). Astera Centerprise currently did not have a database driver to connect to SQL Anywhere databases and we commissioned them to create that as part of our purchase agreement. We are still actively working through that process and troubleshooting any bugs that arise.
- Easily creates Excel files
- REST API integration
- Job Scheduling
- Knowledgeable Support Team
- No automatic updates. Must manually install each new version
- Job scheduling can be cumbersome
- Documentation is lacking
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Historically we have built a number of integrations and small tasks manually through various languages and processes - having to track what we used, who built it, and what server it's running on. Astera Centerprise has been a breakthrough in this regard in a few ways. The first is that it required almost no training to use. I have given someone a 15-minute demo and left feeling confident they could do simple processes with it moving forward. The drag and drop GUI is generally very intuitive and while nothing is perfect, I rarely am fighting against it. The second is there is a wealth of data connections and functions to use. When I talk to peers about this product, I just ask how they are moving data - any data. Do you have an excel sheet that someone updates that need to join its data to a database and from an API and then write these as a CSV file that you import with a PowerShell command? This is literally a task I built in a few hours in Astera Centerprise. If I need to interact with disparate data, Astera Centerprise is the tool I move to first today.
- ETL, ELT - moving and integrating data
- easy UX/Gui for interacting with the application
- Installation and setup
- Data Source Choices
- Complex Transformations
- Occasional Bugs
- Documentation could be better, more clear
- A premium priced product
November 08, 2021
Invest with Astera it will worth the price
Astera Centerprise is being used by different organizations here in our company. As a user or developer, it is really helps me to do a back-end program a lot easier without using of numerous codes, just a logic. It has a big impact on our business problems especially on data automation moving forward to the systems. By introducing this application as one of the solutions on the issues we experienced before regarding the labor and time, in manual entry, it gives wholly keyboarding process in order to create and finish a record, but with the help of Astera it can make the keyboarding in just a click and it can only takes a second or a minute. When it comes in data quality, due to manual it can cause human errors and inconsistent of data, instead of adapting this error, Astera can resolve this by using transformations which fitted to captures the needed data from the files with correct and accurate values. This system can be used efficiently in many organizations that involves gathering and processing of a large number of data.
- Codeless
- Data Automation
- Data Integration
- Easy to Manipulate
- Good User Interface
- Additional formulas in expression
- Set maximum number of emails per run
November 05, 2021
Astera Centerprise A Complete Data Integration Solution
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
We are currently re-writing our organization's ETL processes using Astera Centerprise. Most of those processes were written using VB.net. We are also creating some new ETL processes using Astera Centerprise. Most of my current work involves extracting claim data from databases for each State, format it as per State requirement and FTP the data. Once State receives the data, it sends us acknowledgement files. We then extract the data from the acknowledgement files and load it into our database. We are using Astera Centerprise for this process. There are other IT teams at our organization using Astera for many other company's ETL processes.
- Astera support team is very knowledgeable, helpful and very prompt to answer any question.
- Their product is very simple to use.
- Astera Centerprise Help documentation/training videos are very detailed.
- Astera Centerprise rolled out new version 8 recently. During our conversion from version 7 to version 8, we encountered couple of issues with new Astera version. Once notified, they fixed the issue and sent us the patch within days.
- I think Centerprise Server register feature in version 7 was much simpler than version 8.
October 20, 2021
Centerprise can transform your data management
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
We use it to transform data from legacy systems to newer systems. It addresses the problem of moving data across the enterprise. It also provides centralized management of the jobs created for the transportation of this data. We use the graphical interface to include the business in the design of solutions.
- Makes designing ETL jobs quick
- Able to include business users in the design
- Centralized job management
- Job management interface could use some work
- Some procedural functionality would help in certain situations
- It would be nice for the complied package to detect the environment in which it's running; Prod, Test, Development, and use those parameters accordingly.
May 13, 2020
Solid choice for mid-sized organizations
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
We use it primarily for publishing to a data warehouse. Another production application creates and exchanges XML files with a federal regulatory agency, and as a 1-off, we are using Centerprise to validate an Oracle-to-SQLServer migration.
- Of the six mid-tier ETL/DI tools I studied, Centerprise is the most intuitive to use.
- Customer support is email-centric, but nonetheless solid. Astera happily does conference calls when the need arises.
- Wide range of features.
- Expression transformation uses SQL-ish (as opposed to Java-ish or MS-ish) commands. Simple to use, and select/paste helps.
- Love the PowerCenter-style expression transformation.
- Documentation explanations are in video and text format. While most explanations are relatively clear (or even very clear), in my opinion, the documentation is a bit haphazardly-organized. It takes me longer than I'd like to find something, although I usually do.
- Look-ups transformation certainly works, but it could be more robust. (There are ways around that.)
May 01, 2020
Astera Centerprise simplified our on-boarding process and was a great fit for our needs.
Astera Centerprise is being used by two teams that are responsible for onboarding data for new or existing customers. Those teams work in conjunction to ensure that proper workflows are set up to review and qualify the data prior to ingestion to our downstream systems. It has helped to centralize our data loading and transformation efforts, and provide visibility into data issues or patterns that we didn't have insight into before. Quality of data is key for our process, and we are TB scale, so performance and scalability were a factor as well.
- Handles large volumes of data well!
- Centralizes and simplifies data management loading!
- Provides insight into data anomalies and patterns that weren't previously visible!
- Like any tool, it has a learning curve and is somewhat proprietary in how they approach things.
- It can be clunky to train others who aren't familiar with such tools or concepts, not so intuitive that it can be picked up by any engineer.
May 01, 2020
Astera: ETL in the cloud
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Astera streamlines our data integration process by doing all the work through a workflow. It enables our analysts to connect to virtually any data source and combine, transform, and map data, including statistical and predictive tasks.
- Supports numerous data sources.
- Integration with AWS services.
- Individual statistics per record.
- Visualization intended for debugging.
- Attractive user interface.
- Streaming facilities.
- There is no reusable JDBC configuration.
- Processor configuration changes require stopping all data flow.
April 29, 2020
Worth it!
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
It is used by our data reporting and solutions team to create solutions and complete corrections to EDI issues that arise when submitting healthcare EDI files to the Wisconsin State Medicaid program. We also use this tool to load data to our SQL data warehouse so that all company SQL users have access to the data received from the state and other outside vendors.
- Astera's customer service and help team are quick to respond and have always found solutions to my questions or problems. They also follow up after completing a support request to make sure everything was working correctly. If it's not something the current version allows, as far as functionality, they develop a solution for the next version because they assume if one company has that need that others will as well.
- I've never lost touch with our sales representative. She checks in at least twice a year, if not more, to make sure that we are happy with their product and to see if we need anything. I've rarely needed anything, but when I did she made sure to have the correct person contact me regarding what I asked for and she followed up to make sure the request was resolved.
- EDI is a very complex language and making any changes can cause errors in other areas that you aren't aware of. Astera Centerprise creates an environment that is much easier to understand than looking at a raw data file. The functionality allows us to make changes to each transaction within a file in under a minute with no errors created. Making these changes before we had Astera Centerprise took a week for one file. We can now get to more files to create clean data for the state and have reached 97% acceptance.
- Centerprise's functionality can be applied at any level. It can be a broad change to an entire segment, or it can be a single digit that is changed. You can program the system to look for specific items within a file and change only the records that need to be changed. It can sequence items, it can remove items and it can add items when specifically programmed to. And if you run into a wall creating the program, Astera's help desk will help you get past it. And the program language used is easy to understand as well. If you understand functions in Microsoft Excel or SQL statements, you will be able to use this product.
- When purchasing Astera Centerprise you are given options on how you would like to be trained and each option comes with a different price tag. We chose to be trained using online meetings over several days. The training went too fast and it was not always easy to understand until I started using the product.
- I am a person that wants to learn how and why something works so that I can use the knowledge in the future. When contacting the support team they take the problem, create a solution for you and send it back. The solutions always work, but when I get the solution I have to review every field and function to understand how it works so that I can re-create it for another solution I need. I would much rather have the support team explain what I had done incorrectly and what they changed or I would like to find a solution with them instead of having it handed to me.
- Astera uses license keys to allow their customers rights to only the functionality that was purchased. Each user and server has its own key and each key is only good for one year. There have been 2 different times that we received keys that had less functionality that we purchased. It wasn't until it created problems that we noticed and had to request new keys. This year our sales representative made sure she was available when we updated our keys so that if there was a problem she could fix it right away; however, there were not issues this year. I believe this is something they pay closer attention to now.
April 29, 2020
Astera Centerprise
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Used for syncing data between ecommerce solution and ERP system.
- EDI integration.
- API integration.
- ETL batch updates.
- No issues encountered so far.
April 29, 2020
Astera rocks!
We are using it in Data Migration project to move data from legacy applications to state of the art applications. It is being used by projects under the Data Migration programs. Being used to migrate HR data, CRM data, ERP data, etc.
Data Sources: Oracle DB, SQL Server DB, XML, CSV.
Targets: Oracle DB, XML
Data Sources: Oracle DB, SQL Server DB, XML, CSV.
Targets: Oracle DB, XML
- Very simple installation and configuration.
- Easy to learn.
- User Interface (UI) is very intuitive.
- Simple licensing.
- Expert product support services.
- Performance with large dataset (50 million+ rows) can cause some issues. But there are ways to work around that.
- Generating XML using CSV source - adding additional header elements in the XML was not available in the product. Needed to do some post processing. Should be included in the product feature.
- Data Accuracy - 38 decimal places (i.e NUMBER data type in Oracle type) not supported by Astera in the version we used. Newer version may have addressed this issue
- Needs more pre-built connectors for well-known cloud apps (Dynamics, SFDC etc.).
August 21, 2015
Centerprise makes data integration easy
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
We use Centerprise Data Integrator to process data into and out of our proprietary and off the shelf software applications. We process data into mainly SQL Server back-ends. Our numerous EDI outputs are to private and government agencies. We have even used Centerprise to automate and schedule reports using custom DLL functions. We even use custom functions in Centerprise to encrypt and decrypt some of the data. Our latest implementation exports an excel file and automatically PGP encrypts it from a SQL server back-end.
- Allows for integration of custom functions.
- Allows us to easily migrate data to and from any data source. Our department has become the go-to for automated data extracts.
- We use emails from jobs we run in Centerprise to ensure all jobs run successfully.
- I have not upgraded to the latest version, but in the last version, could use better descriptions in error messages.
- I have not upgraded to the latest version, but in the last version, it would be nice to have reports we could run or have emailed daily/weekly with success/failure of all jobs scheduled.
August 17, 2015
Fast and Simple. All-in-one package
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
We purchased Centerprise to be our ETL tool for our new "CloudNet" Crop Insurance Policy system. It was our tool to do our nightly loads to our Data Warehouse for all of our reporting needs. It was also our tool for sending and receiving all our daily RMA files to the government.
- Once you get the feel around the interface, Centerprise is a real easy and fast tool to get up and running. You can have a Dataflow up and running in mere minutes compared to some other tools on the market. The interface is simple and pretty much everything is all in once place and easy to understand.
- The Preview data on each object is a lifesaver. To be able to set up a Dataflow and preview it's data immediately without having to run or set up a workflow is a very time-saving benefit.
- You can run Dataflows. They do not need to be incorporated into a Workflow in order to run.
- You have the ability to pass in and out parameters to Dataflows. Very handy if you need specific information about a Dataflow (or data in that flow) in order to continue on processing the next step.
- The scheduler is extremely nice and easy.
- Centerprise is an all in one package. Everything is together. You do not need a separate scheduler or bits and pieces of other products in order to get full use of Centerprise. You can Read, write and parse files. You can send emails and/or FTP to government (any) sites. You can schedule your jobs or have your System (we had .NET) call and trigger a job for you.
- Our main concern is backward compatibility with QA testing. We had a few releases of new code, changes or fixed that broke existing code which took us over 90 hours to run thru and refresh all our flows. We like the enhancements, but we don't have time to back thru everything, everytime there is a release to retest and refresh all the Flows. It's not feasible for us.
- Help documentation. There needs to be a lot more with a lot of examples (so we aren't calling and bugging support all the time). Although, they were extremely helpful, but I'm sure they have other things to do than teach us how to use the product.
- Pretty much any enhancement we needed at the time (or asked for) was given to us in a pretty timely manner. The Cobol objects were fixed/enhanced. The out variables were added. The only thing we didn't get to use that we asked for was the REST service calls. We had a lot more we wanted to do with the product.
August 13, 2015
Test drive the product in your environment before buying
Score 5 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
It is used by the integration and implementation groups to import data. It was brought in to make it easier to map the data that is being imported.
- The mapping interface is easy to use.
- It works well with our code repository.
- It does not work well in an environment where you run a lot of small jobs. The queue processor leaves much to be desired.
- Jobs fail for no apparent reason and do not automatically restart. We have to come in every morning and manually restart jobs that have failed overnight.
August 10, 2015
Astera Centerprise Data Integrator
Score 3 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Centerprise Data Integrator is used for importing data received in various formats from our customers. Some send in XML format, others in CSV, some in other delimited types and some we obtain via APIs and web services. The data is then normalized using Centerprise Data Integrator and pushed into our dealer data datastores.
- Centerprise Data Integrator makes it very easy for non-technical people to create and maintain data mappings from one data source type to another. This is beneficial to allow developers and engineers to focus on other parts of the business needs and not be bogged down with constant work flow changes desired by the customers.
- Centerprise Data Integrator is very good at moving and translating large blocks of data efficiently.
- Our biggest problem is with updates. We feel we have to thoroughly test each and every update with complete regression testing before we can apply that update to our production environment. This is due to previous updates often containing bugs or changing existing functionality.
- Centerprise Data Integrator could do a much better job at moving a lot of small sets of data instead of a few large sets.
- Web services connection could be much better. It is difficult to get some web services to work properly.
- Could really benefit from allowing 32-bit integers instead of only 64-bit integers.
August 07, 2015
WOW Why did we wait soooo long?
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
We mainly use Centerprise for two areas. Our team takes other systems' data and transforms that into our format for our developed software. We use Centerprise to pull the necessary information out of the other systems' reports to validate the completion of a conversion. We also use it to extract data from the other systems' reports to do the actual data transformation into our format when the other system's provider will not supply data for the conversion.
- Because the standard reports from one system to another are not always compatible - Centerprise allows us to create a reusable template to standardize the information that we use to validate conversions. Standardizing the reporting data from two systems is an awesome strength that can be developed out of Centerprise.
- We have had several instances that the supplier of software to a customer will not provide data out of their system for conversion. Sometimes it is a timing issue (you will need to wait 6 months for this) and other times it is a cost issue. We have been able to convert accounting and payroll information into our system just based on reports out of the legacy system. Because we can save the template we can now convert anyone on that legacy system without the involvement of the legacy system's software provider.
- We have several support calls that have been labeled as to be done in the future. One is the reading of the File Definition in AcuCobol with the sign trailing in a numeric field. The handling of this would help us in several areas but we have been able to develop a work around at this point.
- Some of the child/overlap configuration for the "RMD" seems awkward.
August 04, 2015
Astera Centerprise rules!
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Centerprise is primarily used to move data from our operational database into our newly created data warehouse. We also intend to use it to exchange data files between different applications. We are still in development, but we pull data from sources that span our whole organization into an enterprise data warehouse that will be accessed by our internal and external users through MicroStrategy, our reporting tool.
- It's incredibly easy to use. The YouTube videos Astera provides are enough to get you started. People with no previous ETL experience can start building simple mappings very quickly.
- It's incredibly easy to install and maintain. After I first installed Centerprise, I was able to start working in just a few minutes, and the maintenance releases are pretty straightforward.
- I am particularly impressed with how much Centerprise simplifies transformations that require more work in other ETL tools. The perfect example is the SCD transformation, which handles all the logic in an Slowly Changing Dimension. Even with a market leader like Informatica, the SCD logic has to be manually built. With Centerprise this can be built in just a few minutes, and it impacts every mapping.
- Performance is definitely an area to work on. My own benchmarking shows a notable difference when introducing simple transformations into a jobflow.
- The tool lacks debugging capabilities
- I would like to see more jobflow stats than the ones provided
- It is Windows-based. Many companies (including ours) are UNIX shops, and try to avoid Windows servers as much as possible, so it would be nice to have a non-Windows version.
August 03, 2015
Make Centerprise your data toolkit's center prize!
Centerprise is used as a key ETL and data integration component bringing together several different financial data sources to compile a single view of our client's corporate finance group. It delivers a single integrated view of their 'cash register' systems and solves the problem of the manual integration of the separate system's data and reports.
- The links to many different data sources made it real easy to gain access to the key data elements and integrate the data across many different systems.
- The graphical approach is self documenting and permits the rapid assimilation of existing work by new team members.
- It makes it VERY easy to build source/destination data reconciliations.
- The ability to incrementally see the data transformation results at any point in a data flow is invaluable.
- The XML processors make it real easy to process and integrate XML data. We've even used Centerprise on its own data logs to pull out and report on the XML job log data for custom reporting.
- Centerprise is an invaluable tool for addressing data integration particularly dealing with 'Shadow IT' Excel spreadsheets.
- The dataflow architecture will take some getting used to as you have to understand the various data flow objects and THINK about how a data flow will work to accomplish what you want.
- The scheduler and job monitor are areas where the product can be improved. We would like to see an independent job monitor as a separate read only component so that a client use license is not not needed to see the working jobs.
- The job scheduler interface is not that intuitive and adding jobs, particularly in 100's, is VERY time consuming using the interface.
- The mapping between UTC and local times need work and the scheduler needs to handle switching back and forth between day light savings.