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Now that IBM bought Ascential, can we expect a true hard working ETL tool
incorporated with DB2 and Websphere Information Integrator?

This will be great if this will happen soon!!!

Thanks,

RdR

RdR wrote:
> Now that IBM bought Ascential, can we expect a true hard working ETL tool
> incorporated with DB2 and Websphere Information Integrator?

You mean Warehouse Manager doesn't cut it for you ?

Warehouse Manager will not come near a "true hard working ETL tool", it
cannot handle complex business rules, complex updates, summarizations,
adaptive applies, etc. Maybe this is one reason Ascential was bought for 1.1
billion dollars. Imagine the acquisition was almost near Lenovo's
acquisition of IBM's PC brands.

"Ian" <ianbjor@mobileaudio.com> wrote in message
news:4236ff7f$1_1@newsfeed.slurp.net...
> RdR wrote:
> > Now that IBM bought Ascential, can we expect a true hard working ETL
tool
> > incorporated with DB2 and Websphere Information Integrator?
>
> You mean Warehouse Manager doesn't cut it for you ?
>

"RdR" <ron@delrosario.ca> wrote in message
news:1pydnYlYz48G5KrfRVn-oA@rogers.com...
> Warehouse Manager will not come near a "true hard working ETL tool", it
> cannot handle complex business rules, complex updates, summarizations,
> adaptive applies, etc. Maybe this is one reason Ascential was bought for
1.1
> billion dollars. Imagine the acquisition was almost near Lenovo's
> acquisition of IBM's PC brands.
>
IBM PC business was a money loosing (or break even at best) operation.

Hello,

As I see it:
Warehouse Manager is not a real contender in this area (ETL).
It can't compare to tools such as those from Informatica or Ascential
and is lacking many features found for a small price in Oracle (OWB).
OWB just kills the Warehouse Manager if you make the comparison.

IBM doesn't look bad in the Information Integration market, but in the
ETL they had a long way to go and an unclear strategy IMHO.

Now they have to integrate this with UDB at a decent price.

Regards,
Christopher Keller

On Tue, 15 Mar 2005 08:28:34 -0700, Ian <ianbjor@mobileaudio.com>
wrote:

>RdR wrote:
>> Now that IBM bought Ascential, can we expect a true hard working ETL tool
>> incorporated with DB2 and Websphere Information Integrator?
>
>You mean Warehouse Manager doesn't cut it for you ?

> Now they have to integrate this with UDB at a decent price.

Yeah, Data Stage is a good product. But personally, I think the only
reason to integrate the products would be for marketing. From an
engineering point of view, it's all bad.

I've evaluated etl products for purchasing quite a few times, and have
always penalized products that had tight dependencies on a specific
database product.

Plus, db2 doesn't need any more baggage anyway. I'd prefer for it to
be a great database, and nothing else.

Any news on when this purchase will be finalized?

buck

On 25 Apr 2005 07:49:35 -0700, "Buck Nuggets" <bucknuggets@yahoo.com>
wrote:

>> Now they have to integrate this with UDB at a decent price.
>
>Yeah, Data Stage is a good product. But personally, I think the only
>reason to integrate the products would be for marketing. From an
>engineering point of view, it's all bad.
>
>I've evaluated etl products for purchasing quite a few times, and have
>always penalized products that had tight dependencies on a specific
>database product.
>
>Plus, db2 doesn't need any more baggage anyway. I'd prefer for it to
>be a great database, and nothing else.

I do basically agree with the points made. But Oracle does bundle
it's DB with an ETL Tool (OWB) at such a price, that a comparison of
UDB with Informatica or Ascential for the ETL does make it harder for
IBM to compete on the UNIX platform for DWH applications. If you could
get Data Stage at about the same price of the Data Warehouse Manager,
then the case for IBM looks a whole lot better. (This was our
particular experience when we were considering an enterprise data
warehouse on UNIX. I know in our situation we had difficulty making
the business case for IBM + Informatica as opposed to Oracle DBMS+OWB)

A tight coupling of ELT and DBMS could lead to easier implementations
and better performance at the price of portability (but how many
Oracle locations, for example, would now not use OWB).

Are ETL tools becoming a commodity?

On 25 Apr 2005 07:49:35 -0700, "Buck Nuggets" <bucknuggets@yahoo.com>
wrote:

>> Now they have to integrate this with UDB at a decent price.
>
>Yeah, Data Stage is a good product. But personally, I think the only
>reason to integrate the products would be for marketing. From an
>engineering point of view, it's all bad.
>
>I've evaluated etl products for purchasing quite a few times, and have
>always penalized products that had tight dependencies on a specific
>database product.
>
>Plus, db2 doesn't need any more baggage anyway. I'd prefer for it to
>be a great database, and nothing else.

I do basically agree with the points made. But Oracle does bundle
it's DB with an ETL Tool (OWB) at such a price, that a comparison of
UDB with Informatica or Ascential for the ETL does make it harder for
IBM to compete on the UNIX platform for DWH applications. If you could
get Data Stage at about the same price of the Data Warehouse Manager,
then the case for IBM looks a whole lot better. (This was our
particular experience when we were considering an enterprise data
warehouse on UNIX. I know in our situation we had difficulty making
the business case for IBM + Informatica as opposed to Oracle DBMS+OWB)

A tight coupling of ELT and DBMS could lead to easier implementations
and better performance at the price of portability (but how many
Oracle locations, for example, would now not use OWB).

Are ETL tools becoming a commodity?

> A tight coupling of ELT and DBMS could lead to easier implementations
> and better performance at the price of portability (but how many
> Oracle locations, for example, would now not use OWB).

Well, if they want to bundle it for marketing purposes that's fine.
Just hope they don't mess with the code: I might not need a commercial
etl tool (or yet another commercial etl tool) but I do need the
database. And don't know how many shops would stick with OWB - I'm not
up on its current capabilities. I remember the product before oracle
purchased it - and I didn't like it much. Much better than SQL
Server's DTS, but that isn't saying much.

> Are ETL tools becoming a commodity?

Unfortunately, I don't think so. But they are having to be rewritten
for real-time warehousing, for enterprise service busses and service
oriented architectures. And I'm hearing that the EAI and ETL
categories are consolidating to pull this off. Sorry about all those
buzzwords!

In my opinion the use of commercial etl products is like the use of
'FrontPage' for html development: useful to some, but completely
eclipsed by custom development & 'best practices' to most others.
Unfortunately, best practices & design patterns for ETL never really
developed - since self-serving authors back in the early nineties
convinced the entire industry that only commercial solutions would work
for ETL. Like it was somehow completely different than all other
software development domains.

What I'd really like to see is a set of open-source software components
- not a huge open source monolithic app that does everything - but a
set of individual open source tools for metadata management, process
management, auditing, file image deltas, etc, etc. This shouldn't be
difficult, we're not talking brain surgery or rocket science here.

buck

I would think that if IBM decides to "tightly couple" Ascential DataStag
and DB2, it will probably be "tightly coupled" but optional. Not
everyone needs a database needs an ETL tool also. But that doesn't mean
they can't be integrated if someone DOES need both. Look at the
Information Integrator product. It is tightly integrated with DB2, but
you don't have to buy if you don't need it.

Larry Edelstein

Buck Nuggets wrote:
>>A tight coupling of ELT and DBMS could lead to easier implementations
>>and better performance at the price of portability (but how many
>>Oracle locations, for example, would now not use OWB).
>
>
> Well, if they want to bundle it for marketing purposes that's fine.
> Just hope they don't mess with the code: I might not need a commercial
> etl tool (or yet another commercial etl tool) but I do need the
> database. And don't know how many shops would stick with OWB - I'm not
> up on its current capabilities. I remember the product before oracle
> purchased it - and I didn't like it much. Much better than SQL
> Server's DTS, but that isn't saying much.
>
>
>>Are ETL tools becoming a commodity?
>
>
> Unfortunately, I don't think so. But they are having to be rewritten
> for real-time warehousing, for enterprise service busses and service
> oriented architectures. And I'm hearing that the EAI and ETL
> categories are consolidating to pull this off. Sorry about all those
> buzzwords!
>
> In my opinion the use of commercial etl products is like the use of
> 'FrontPage' for html development: useful to some, but completely
> eclipsed by custom development & 'best practices' to most others.
> Unfortunately, best practices & design patterns for ETL never really
> developed - since self-serving authors back in the early nineties
> convinced the entire industry that only commercial solutions would work
> for ETL. Like it was somehow completely different than all other
> software development domains.
>
> What I'd really like to see is a set of open-source software components
> - not a huge open source monolithic app that does everything - but a
> set of individual open source tools for metadata management, process
> management, auditing, file image deltas, etc, etc. This shouldn't be
> difficult, we're not talking brain surgery or rocket science here.
>
> buck
>