And then there were three...

ETL tools used in Oracle BI that it.

With Oracle going round buying up lots of companies they have been creating a huge potential for confusion for the integration community, including their own consultants.

We had an Oracle consultant in the other day to tune up the database performance (he was very knowledgeable by the way). He had just transferred into the new BI practice and was an expert with OWB, the in house ETL tool. When faced with Informatica he had to learn quickly, on site with us showing him how to use it. Strange really, as we licence the product from Oracle.

It’s not the consultants fault; I am led to believe that there are over 500 products being used in Oracle environments, so there are probably more than three ETL tools in the mix (there’s even talk of ETL free warehouses).

But what should customers use? What should we be advising customers starting a new BI project? What will Siebel 8 use at it’s core?

Over the past year we have had lots of information and rumours coming from user groups, press releases and the consultant word of mouth. Most of what I have heard either conflicts with other messages or just doesn’t make any sense. An example is that there is talk of removing the DAC (a very useful tool btw), and replacing with an Informatica tool, but that Informatica is not their preferred ETL tool.

Over the next 3-6 months I’ll be advising clients on the technology choices they have, and when choosing Oracle, the different flavours. I’ll also be recruiting more staff and training others on the appropriate software tools. Without clear open communication from Oracle these tasks are near impossible.

I hope that we can get a better idea of where things are going as soon as possible.