ETL Tools are already commodities but having said that, a new breed of ETL
tools are needed to go beyond being commoditized, something that has a
component of real time. Datawarehouses nowadays no longer can suffice with
just historical, statistical and data trend information. It now needs
tactical functionality like answering questions like:

1) Do I have a new order?
2) Have I fulfilled this order?
3) Hos fast did I fulfill this order? ...etc.

Then if the ETL tool can answer questions supporting tactical business
decisions and I will say that breed of an ETL tool will not fall under what
is termed a commodity. This is where Oracle Warehouse Builder, Informatica,
Golden Gate, and even Ascential Data Stage (on its own) falls uder in. With
the Acquisition of Ascential by IBM, then Ascential Data Stage, combined
with Websphere Information Integrator, will be this new breed of ETL tool,
one that can support historical information and at the same time real time
information.

I agree, ETL tools are comoditized but there are new breeds of ETL tools
that will solve business issues and are beyond just marketing talk. I hope
Ascential Data Stage + Websphere Informaiton Integrator with Q replication
and Data Propagator will be this new breed of ETL tools.

RdR

"christopher keller" <cwkeller@web.de> wrote in message
news:kg99719eqqgn76o3pocrun0hrvu6ill75v@4ax.com...
> 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 Mon, 2 May 2005 00:07:13 -0400, "RdR" <ron@delrosario.ca> wrote:
>I agree, ETL tools are comoditized but there are new breeds of ETL tools
>that will solve business issues and are beyond just marketing talk. I hope
>Ascential Data Stage + Websphere Informaiton Integrator with Q replication
>and Data Propagator will be this new breed of ETL tools.

My hope, too, for a price we can afford. IBM also now offers a z/OS
Data Event Publishing Software (Version 1), based on log capture, as
well as their SQL and Q replication offerings.