CData Sync Reviews

The main use case is that the stack is MongoDB, with the main data source from Mongo. CData Sync comes as a third party that is layered on Mongo.

Power BI is directly connected to CData Sync, so we can stream the data from Mongo and visualize it.

The other unique thing about our use case is that aside from streaming live transactional data for informed decisions, we are in multiple markets at the moment in several African countries. This has been challenging because streaming data for different currencies and different local currencies, then accumulating everything in USD, makes everything look muddled up. However, it has been good with CData Sync since we can have everything in one currency.

The beautiful thing about CData Sync is that you can preview the data directly on their UI. The data that is settled in the database can be previewed on CData Sync before actually ingesting it into the BI tool.

That is one feature I appreciate. You can actually pick a particular column or drop a particular column. CData Sync's preview feature speeds up my workflow because at that layer of preview, I already know what I want into my pipeline and what I don't want. The SQL query at that level would also help to filter whatever I don't want.

There are times when you are streaming and trying to connect that CData Sync fails. However, the team has been very helpful. There is a particular technical support person that has usually come to my aid whenever there are issues. For improvement, I think the turnaround time for support can increase, especially on weekends.

I want to discuss the security of CData Sync. It is not something I actually have visibility to, but I think if CData Sync could give users the opportunity to put their own security layer on this, that would be beneficial. If CData Sync is compromised, who do we hold responsible? So security is an area for improvement.

CData Sync's interface is good. For integration with other tools, I think CData Sync could do well by integrating with other providers, especially AI agents so that one can easily integrate CData Sync to more agents out there.

I have been using CData Sync for about four months.

CData Sync is stable. Our transactional data is not a lot so far, so I can say CData Sync is stable.

For CData Sync data scalability regarding the increasing amount of data, our data is not a lot right now, so I think CData Sync handles it perfectly. Maybe later when transactional data grows significantly, we might be able to ask for better plans, especially regarding a scalable plan.

Customer support is great. Sonja is a great helper. Technical support from David has been helpful. I can tell you that CData Sync is stable and their customer support is trying.

For customer support at CData Sync, I would give them an eight. I would not give them a ten because on weekends the reply is slow. Another thing I thought about is they need to consider users that are not in their region. I think it is a time difference issue.

I did not purchase CData Sync through the AWS Marketplace. I saw CData Sync's ad on LinkedIn. I then reached out to a particular agent. That agent put me through their customer support team. That agent sent me an email and copied their team members. Since then, we have been discussing.

We had been doing everything manually. We saw that the manual way was not scalable. We then had to go the automation route.

I think the startup cost is fine for us.

I was able to integrate CData Sync easily with the help of CData Sync's technical staff.

Money has been saved with CData Sync. If we had gone through the route of a larger engineering effort for our pipeline, we would have spent more. In spending more, we might also have needed to employ a data engineer. So we have saved money on the technical side and on the staffing side. As an analyst, I was able to handle the integration.

For startup cost, I think it is still fair. Although we are a startup with a lean budget, if the startup cost was expensive, we might not have considered CData Sync at all.

We thought about using Zapier or other automation tools. We could have automatically used Selenium to download and scrape web pages and then store them in Google Drive. That is how we did it before.

I gave CData Sync a rating of seven because I have weighed the downsides and the upsides. CData Sync is solving my use case and I am able to use it, which already puts it past five. The usefulness and the simplicity in the technicality are things I also love about CData Sync, so that adds one to the five, making six. Looking at everything overall, including the support, the cost, and everything else, that makes it seven. I think seven is a good rating for me.

The major use case I have for CData Sync is towards the ETL part. The way it works can be summarized in two sentences. Earlier ETLs required that you map a field manually, and if you had any new field, you had to manually adapt it. With CData Sync, this process is automated. If you have a new field, it updates the schema structure and adds that attribute automatically. If you have additional fields, whether you have one, two, three, or four, it goes ahead, updates that particular schema, and maps the data to that field automatically. It is such a time-saver in the ETL domain because previously we had to find out which particular mapping needed updating, and then go into those mappings to adapt them. With CData Sync, you do not have to do anything like that. You only have to update the source to indicate that it now has extra attributes, and the tool takes care of the rest.

Regarding the data transformation features during synchronization in CData Sync, I assess them as follows. As I mentioned, we were going ahead and manually doing updates wherever we needed transformation. For example, if my data is coming with names in lower cases but I have to put them into camel case or a title case format, that is something I have to apply manually. Otherwise, if it is a pass-through, the tool takes care of itself.

The drag-and-drop interface of CData helps to set up data workflows. I would say it is almost similar to other ETL tools which I have used. At the tool configuration level where you do not have to code much, it is almost similar in terms of familiarity. However, it has good features in that you do not have to do certain things manually.

The detailed logging and monitoring features are helpful for troubleshooting. Logging captures where it was updated, when it was updated, and who updated the source. When something fails because of transformation or other issues, you are able to get that information. Length is never an issue and data type is never an issue because the tool takes the data type from whatever is in the source. Unless that data type is not present in the target table, then you have an option to make it a default as string because then it takes everything. With that approach, it is actually quite good.

Change Data Capture operates on the schema level. If you have a schema change, whether it is a delta or a full load, it takes care of the target system. It changes your schema automatically, maps that particular field to the newly added field, and puts the data through that field itself. Those features are quite excellent.

In the area of improvements, within 20 days I would say that if there were a feature where I could add the transformation upfront itself, that would be great. For example, if my source is coming in a certain format and in XYZ target one I need it to be transformed with a lookup onto another table, if I could update that way with a platform staging approach where I am creating the tables into CData itself before sending it to the target, it would be excellent. That way I would not have to go into mappings; I would just have to update one particular source where I would create these platform staging tables. Right now, we can do it in an alternate way, but if the tool could give us that option directly, then it would be great. If not, it is still a great tool.

I have been dealing with this particular project product for around 20 days and it is super easy because I am using it in a freelancing project. Over there, I am consulting and developing this particular part in my area. CData Sync is a good tool.

Regarding the stability of CData Sync, I was happy with how stable it is. Whatever data I was working with, it was stable. However, I do not know how it would behave if the records or the data becomes a lot, because at the moment it was behaving quite well.

Regarding the scalability of CData Sync, my assessment is that it scales well. On the scalability terms, I can say one thing which I am sure of: if you have to scale it to multiple different source systems to the targets, it is scaling with that. Whether it is one object or whether it is 10 attributes, it takes it as changed data, updates the target accordingly, and you are good.

Concerning technical support, I have not had experience with them. It has only been 20 days, and there is nothing which we discussed because the knowledge base for CData was enough for us to get things done.

In terms of return on investment, I would say if you have to pay less to develop, you are saving money and that is your return on investment. Regarding pricing, I have a little bit of an idea of how much a company goes ahead and puts it to the customers. Normally, my rates to the customer become almost 2X what my company gives it to me. With that piece, if they have to pay 10 days less for me, that is 10 to 12% of development effort which they are saving.

When I compare CData Sync with other ETL tools, I would say it stands out in its own category. You do not have to manually put that particular mapping into the target to indicate that a field is new. CData Sync is the only tool which I know of that does it automatically. Whereas if I talk about PowerCenter, IDQ, Talent, or anything like that, you have to go manually into each mapping to update the target system.

CData Sync helps to manage my resource loads. Not just with source load, but also towards speeding up things in development where I have to go ahead and update the target structure, update the mapping, and all those particular pieces because that is already being taken care of by CData Sync. Not for us because our right now job is to create manual reports to push it, as it is an ad hoc request what we are doing right now. As the tool is fairly new, we are taking it a little bit slow and are not going ahead and automating it at the moment. I have not utilized the scheduling feature. I would rate this product a 7 out of 10.