Categories and criteria examined

Below we have listed all the criteria we examined. In the first place we asked some basic questions about the company. In the middle of the page there are several links you can click on to select information about the more technical criteria like architecture, scalability, maintainability, functionality, usability and so forth. At the end, important information like version number, type, price indications, etc. The criteria for success are explained in more detail in the full ETL Survey 2008 Report which can be bought on this site.

Company & Market

Entered the market in the year: In which year was the product released for the first time?

Customers world wide: The number of customers worldwide

Installations world wide: The number of installations worldwide. For code generators the number of developer seats

Buy and download the ETL Survey Report

Architecture

Parallel processing
Symmetric Multiprocessing (SMP): Is Symmetric Multiprocessing supported? Normal in Windows NT and UNIX. The processors in SMP systems share their internal and external memory.

Massively parallel processing (MPP): Every processor in a MPP system has its own internal and external memory and database, allowing high performance to be achieved. These databases should be synchronized.

Cluster Aware: Is the ETL server 'cluster aware' and does it support load balancing, fail-over and other cluster facilities?

Grid: Can an ETL process run on a 'grid' of computers or servers?


Scalability
Job distribution: Is it possible to run ETL processes on different machines or processors?

Data pipelining: Can the different steps of an ETL process run on different machines or processors?

Partitioning: Is it possible to partition based on, for example, product codes, to determine on which machine or processor the data has to be processed?


Basic architecture: h = hub & spoke (all data runs through one point), d = distributed (multiple lines between sources and targets) and m = multi hub/spoke

End-to-end BI infrastructure: Does the ETL tool exchange meta data, for example star schemas, with OLAP or reporting tools, from their own brand or third parties

Supports CWM: Is the ETL tool CWM-compliant, in other words does it support the Common Warehouse Meta Model?

Version control system: Does the product contain a version control system with check-in and check-out features?

ETL Functionality

Splitting data streams/multiple targets: Is it possible to read a data source once and load the results into two or more tables?

Conditional splitting: The same, but then in a conditional way, for example, if revenu is higher then 1000 put the results in table 1 else in table 2

Union: Put rows of different tables with the same structure into one table or dataset

Pivoting: Is it possible to transform de-normalised data, having data in the column names, into rows

Depivoting: The other way around, transform (highly) normalised data to de-normalised data, putting data in the columns

Key lookups in memory: Can one load a table completely into internal memory and search the table? (without having to make joins)

Key lookups reusable across processes: Are these tables reusable across different loading processes in such a way the key lookup table is loaded once into memory?

Slowly changing dimensions: Does the tool support slowly changing dimensions (hm = manually; wizard = wizard; auto = out-of-the-box)

Scheduler: Is there a mature scheduler that supports dependencies?

Error handling within job: Can errors be detected within the job, and is it possible to change the route within the process flow when a specific error arises?

Impact analysis: Is it possible to make an impact analysis of proposed changes (when an attribute or table must change)

Data lineage: Can one track down easily the source of an attribute/information-element (reversed impact analysis)

Automatic documentation: Can you publish and document a process/transformation automatically and navigate through it with a browser?

Support for data mining models: Is it possible during the loading process to make use of the results of a data mining process?

Support for analytical functions: During the loading process, is it possible to invoke different kinds of analytical functions like forecasting, basket analysis, regression?

Ease-of-Use

Ease-of-use: The ease-of-use of the product. Is it easy to learn and easy to use on a daily basis?

WYSIWYG: Is the principle ‘What You See Is What You Get’ applied to the DATA?

Screen design: Is the screen design ergonomic and well-balanced?

Task compatibility ETL / EAI: Does the tool support the tasks (in the same sequence) as the ETL developer?

Reusability

Reusability of components: Are components reusable and can they handle parameters (this is not the same as copy-paste)?

Decomposition: Can processes be divided into named small pieces of building blocks (modular programming)?

User-defined functions: Is it possible to define user-defined functions and to use them in the process flow?

Comments on selection of objects: Can one make comments on a selection of objects in such a way that these comments are tightly coupled

Debugging

Step-by-step running: Can one run the process flow step-by-step?

Row-by-row running: Can one run the process flow row-by-row?

Breakpoints: Can one set a breakpoint on a particular process step or a row of data?

Watches: Can one define watch points, so the system postpone running when a certain condition is met?

Compiler/validater: Is it possible to validate the process flow (and/or code) with one click of the mouse and are errors reported and marked?

Real-time

Integration batch - real-time: Is it possible to define within the ETL tool process flows moving and transforming data in real-time and in batch?

Mechanism: How are changes in the source systems detected and put through (mq = message queing; logging = database logs or journals; trigger = database triggers)?

On-demand data integration: Can one publish an ETL process and/or target attribute as a Web Service?

Connectivity

Native connections: How much and which native connections does the ETL tool support? (ODBC, OLE DB and flat files excluded)

Packages / enterprise applications: How many packages / enterprise applications can the tool read meta data from with one click of the mouse (for example SAP, Siebel, Peoplesoft, JD Edwards, Baan)

Real-time connections: How much and which type of message queing products can the tool connect to?

Support for joined tables as source: Can one join two tables in a graphical manner letting execute the join on the database as opposed to letting the ETL tool join the tables

Changed data capture: Does the ETL tool support the principle of Changed Data Capture (select only the changes (deltas) from the database)

Built-in functions for data quality: Are there functions available to control the quality of the data (for example a matching transformation or an address cleanser) # fuzzy logic

Built-in functions for data validation: Does the tool have functions for data validation like ‘delete duplicates’, ‘missing values’, ‘incorrect data’) # 100% match

Data profiling: Options for data profiling, uniqueness of values, maximum, minimum, distribution of values, and so on.

The Tool

Platforms: The number of platforms the ETL tool supports (7 points for Java, which runs on nearly every platform)

Version: The version number of the product that has been evaluated

Engine-based / code generator: Is the tool Engine-based or an Code-generator (eg = engine based; cg = code generator)

Type: ‘Process’ when the user can define an unlimited number of tasks/steps between source and target else 'Map'

Price configuration I (x 1.000 euro): WINTEL, 2 processors, Oracle, MS SQL Server, 2 developers and a license for development and testing purposes (1 processor)

Price configuration II (x 1.000 euro): UNIX, 4 processors, Oracle, DB/400, SAP, 3 developers and a license for development and testing purposes (2 processors)

Buy and download the ETL Survey Report

Back to the homepage of etltool.com