Item: Matillion
Rating: 8
Author: Verified User

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We use Matillion for loading data from various sources into Snowflake Data Lake. We have data in various source systems such as SQL servers, many SAAS applications with proprietary databases, Quickbooks, files, and so forth. It is important to have data from all of these sources in the data lake for integrated reporting for the business.

Pros and Cons

ELT - Extract Load and Transform
Mostly a direct copy of data into the destination is handled very well
Managing secrets and all connections being handled using parameters/variables

Some connections are not straightforward to set up
Upgrades can get a bit complicated and require a backup instance to be created
Ability to email data files

Return on Investment

Faster ETL loads
Easier maintenance of ETL Pipelines
Being able to connect to most of the sources directly from Matillion

Usability

It has been easy to train new employees who don't have previous experience with Matillion. It is quite self-explanatory. There are quite a few things that can be done with Python, however, we have not really looked into this feature much but likely will do in the future. Mostly, it is drag and drop of components and environments can be set up so easy to set up connections as well.

Time to Value

It took just a few hours to get set up with Matillion. Only in cases where we had to connect to data sources, in some cases, it took time as third parties had to white-list the IP address for Matillion to allow the connection. Overall setting up the instance, and setting up environment variables was quite quick.

Scalability

So far connection to various data sources has worked well. There is a Workday connector that was recently launched which we will be looking into. They have QuickBooks connector as well which was a bit challenging to set up. Scalability is good, however, we have not looked into everything that is available.

Alternatives Considered

Talend Open Studio, Talend Data Integration, Talend Data Catalog, AWS Glue, SQL Server Integration Services and Informatica Cloud Data Integration

Matillion is much easier to set up and easier to work for the team. Offers a lot more connections which are easier to set up. Environment variables make it easy to set up once and job creation is easy. We use Metadata tables to just loop through the list of tables that need to be loaded. So development is just a matter of seconds when there are new tables to be loaded.

Key Insights

Do you think Matillion delivers good value for the price?

Yes

Are you happy with Matillion's feature set?

Yes

Did Matillion live up to sales and marketing promises?

Yes

Did implementation of Matillion go as expected?

Yes

Would you buy Matillion again?

Yes

Other Software Used

Snowflake, Tableau Cloud, Microsoft Power BI

Likelihood to Recommend

It is well suited for direct data transfer from source to destination. Emailing success/failures of jobs is a bit complicated. Also, upgrades are quite frequent which do take time and testing and setting up backup instances. We always have to remember to keep the backup instance off and remember to delete it after the upgraded version has been tested.

Matillion Review

Overall Satisfaction with Matillion