All the ETL vendors say the same thing: “our biggest competitor is custom code and stored procedures”. There are still a large number of organizations building data warehouses without using an ETL tool, writing their own, mostly very complex, SQL statements, often difficult to maintain. This is not very smart if you realize that these tools can increase productivity by a factor of three to five. Two of the most important features in this case are that these tools are completely meta data driven, and work with an easy to understand graphical user interface (GUI).

Kimball University: Should You Use An ETL Tool?

The ETL Tool Survey 2011 contains a fully independent comparison of all significant data integration tools in the market. Comparison took place on seven categories and almost 90 criteria. Many customers from all over the world have ordered the ETL tools comparison report and got real benefits from using the information it contains. Nineteen of the major players (see logos below) in this area have contributed to the survey. Get immediate insight into which data integration tools have scored well on specific categories and criteria. By doing so you will ensure that your organization gets the best ETL tool for the best price.

Unused data in the data warehouse is of no use at all. It takes up valuable space and often has a negative effect on the performance. For that reason, people generally don't load all the data they have available in their source systems into a datawarehouse. They select only the data that is considered relevant for decision-making, customer relationship management (CRM) and performance management. However, after analysis and reporting, one may want to have some detailed data available to be able to take certain actions. [Read more...]