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Calculating the Cost of ETL
By Joe McKee
Oracle's Ali El Kortobi champions integrated, graphical ETL tool.
Business users need to accurately collect and report critical data
to make business decisions—turning data into truthful information. Making sense of corporations' massive data flows to do so requires a flexible solution that can extract, transform, and load (ETL) data for analysis.
"ETL is key to data warehousing" explains Ali El Kortobi, Oracle's senior director of product development for data warehousing. "A warehouse allows developers to integrate the data and build objects supporting analysis."
Some companies implement expensive best-of-breed solutions such as Informatica and Ascential, a move that puzzles El Kortobi. "Buying best-of-breed means paying for a whole other transformation engine on top of the transformation engine you already own, the Oracle9i database" he explains. "With Oracle9i Warehouse Builder, developers have an entire tools suite within the Oracle9i system that allows construction of a tailored warehouse that's more effective than best-of-breed."
Warehouse Builder's Single Interface
Warehouse Builder offers a sophisticated graphical user interface (GUI) where developers can construct the elements of warehousing—data storage, data flows, and data-query environment, El Kortobi explains. "Most best-of-breed solutions have separate interfaces for each," he adds. "Warehouse Builder has a single user interface that handles any warehousing scenario."
Within that single GUI, developers can work with relational and multi-dimensional systems. Warehouse Builder makes these constructs available from a design perspective, making it one of the very few tools to have full object design capabilities for both OLAP dimensions and OLAP cubes (also known as facts).
Because it can reach into different systems, Warehouse Builder's interface makes any data source appear as if it were an Oracle database. Importing a new source table, query, or flat file is done via import wizards. "Unlike best-of-breeds, Warehouse Builder is system- and source-independent, making it elegant and easy to use," says El Kortobi.
When it comes to actual code, all components constructed within Warehouse Builder are built to open standards (SQL, CWM, XPDL), making them reusable and portable. Additionally, from a single design environment, Warehouse Builder will generate specially optimized code for the Oracle platform that leverages current and future versions, eliminating the need to recode after a database upgrade. There's even an ABAP code generator for access to SAP applications, giving Warehouse Builder integration and coding abilities to non-Oracle products.
The GUI is also where developers define and organize metadata.
"Warehouse Builder can capture metadata right from the source table or file," adds El Kortobi. "If there are no definitions, developers can define them through the interface."
Change Management
Production situations introduce all kinds of change. Databases are upgraded, and table columns get added and deleted. But in complex ETL processes, one small change impacts entire data flows.
"Warehouse Builder is amazing at solving problems," explains El Kortobi. "When a change in a data source occurs, most best-of-breed tools simply report the problem in complex SQL statements to decipher. When Warehouse Builder detects a change, it specifies the exact filter or data element that was changed, what components will be affected, and how the change will impact relevant data flows.
"Even if the entire target database is upgraded, Warehouse Builder detects the change, and new code will be generated without redesign, optimized to the new version," El Kortobi adds.
Costs Comparisons
El Kortobi points to a recent independent study on ETL showing Warehouse Builder to be 50 times less expensive than best-of-breed solutions. "Warehouse Builder offers better ETL at 50 times the savings," says El Kortobi. "This is one decision that doesn't need a lot of data analysis."
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