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IBM InfoSphere DataStage vs Qlik Compose comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 19, 2024

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

IBM InfoSphere DataStage
Ranking in Data Integration
6th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
42
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Qlik Compose
Ranking in Data Integration
33rd
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.5
Number of Reviews
12
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of July 2025, in the Data Integration category, the mindshare of IBM InfoSphere DataStage is 4.8%, down from 5.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Qlik Compose is 1.1%, up from 0.9% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Data Integration
 

Featured Reviews

Swetha S - PeerSpot reviewer
The solution streamlines design, development, and deployment with effective ETL features
The support has been really good. Typically, if we have any issues, we raise a ticket with IBM, and they help us resolve the issues if required. We also have the flexibility to submit a feature request to be included as part of the wishlist, potentially becoming a product feature in subsequent releases.
Sahil Taneja - PeerSpot reviewer
Easy matching and reconciliation of data
The initial setup was easy for the data warehousing concept. But for a person who is new to ETL and warehousing concepts, it may take some time. If someone is familiar with these concepts, they could understand and learn the tool quickly. However, compared to other tools, the UI is complex. It would be helpful to have a better UI and documentation for new users. As of now, there is a challenge in learning the Compose tool for new users altogether. Qlik Compose was deployed on-premises. But the servers, like the SQL servers were maintained on the cloud—the managed instances.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"We can view what we want to do. We can transform data and put them on tables."
"The most valuable feature is the data integration for data warehousing."
"When we have needed help from the IBM team, they were helpful. Our company is a premium partner so we get fast responses."
"It's useful for reporting and selecting different extract files."
"The most valuable feature of the solution is the ability to incorporate very complex business rules in Data Stage."
"DataStage has also improved its connectors, such as connectivity with Kafka for real-time data integration, cloud connectors, and others like Spark and HVAC SaaS. All these processes are expected to shift to the cloud in the next five years. It's a very robust tool, much like PowerCenter."
"The most valuable feature for our data processing needs is IBM InfoSphere DataStage's capability to handle ETL tasks with large record volumes."
"DataStage works better with Linux operating systems when the application services are hosted on Linux system equipment, but it's powerful on Windows too."
"The most valuable is its excellence as a graphical data representation tool and the versatility it offers, especially with drill-down capabilities."
"I have found it to be a very good, stable, and strong product."
"It is a scalable solution."
"It can scale."
"There were many valuable features, such as extracting any data to put in the cloud. For example, Qlik was able to gather data from SAP and extract SAP data from the platforms."
"Qlik Compose is good enough. It is user-friendly and intuitive."
"It's a stable solution."
"One of the most valuable features was the ability to integrate multiple source systems that mainly used structured IDBMS versions."
 

Cons

"So, there are some features that are missing. If I compare DataStage to Talend, Talend allows you to write custom code in Java or use these tools in your applications as well if you are building a job application. But in DataStage, it does not allow you to write custom code for any component."
"In the future, I would like to see more integration with cloud technologies."
"There could be more customization options for the product."
"There are three things that could improve - the cloud, monitoring and cloud integration. It's a solid product but not a modern one and of course it depends what you're looking for."
"Working with some of the big data components is good, but I can see improvements are needed."
"Its documentation is not up to the mark. While building APIs, we had a lot of problems trying to get around it because it is not very user-friendly. We tried to get hold of API documentation, but the documentation is not very well thought out. It should be more structured and elaborate. In terms of additional features, I would like to see good reporting on performance and performance-tuning recommendations that can be based on AI. I would also like to see better data profiling information being reported on InfoSphere."
"Improvements for DataStage could include better integration with modern data sources like cloud solutions and documents, along with enhancing its capability to handle non-structured data."
"The initial setup could be more straightforward."
"When processing data from certain tables with a large volume of data, we encounter significant delays. For instance, when dealing with around one million records, it typically takes three to four hours. To address this, I aim to implement performance improvements across all tables, ensuring swift processing similar to those that are currently complete within seconds. The performance issue primarily arises when we analyze the inserts and updates from the source, subsequently dropping the table. While new insertions are handled promptly, updates are processed slowly, leading to performance issues. Despite consulting our Qlik vendors, they were unable to pinpoint the exact cause of this occurrence. Consequently, I am seeking ways to optimize performance within Qlik Compose, specifically concerning updates."
"I'd like to have access to more developer training materials."
"Qlik's ETL and data transformation could be better."
"There is some scope for improvement around the documentation, and a better UI would definitely help."
"For more complex work, we are not using Qlik Compose because it cannot handle very high volumes at the moment. It needs the same batching capabilities that other ETL tools have. We can't batch the data into small chunks when transforming large amounts of data. It tries to do everything in one shot and that's where it fails."
"It could enhance its capabilities in the realm of self-service options as currently, it is more suited for individuals with technical proficiency who can create pages using it."
"There could be more customization options."
"The solution has room for improvement in the ETL. They have an ETL, but when it comes to the monitoring portion, Qlik Compose doesn't provide a feature for monitoring."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The solution is cheap."
"The pricing is competitive but on the higher side of the pricing scale."
"It's quite expensive."
"It is quite expensive."
"High-cost of ownership: They could take a page from open source software."
"It's very expensive."
"Small and medium-sized companies cannot afford to pay for this solution."
"Our internal team takes care of group licensing and cost. We don't have individual licenses. We have group licensing at the company level. Usually, IBM doesn't charge anything separately on the licensing side. For storage and everything else, we are paying around $6,000 per month, which is not very high. It includes Linux data storage, execution, and licensing. They're charging $40 for one-hour execution. Based on that, we are spending around $2,000 on the production environment and $1,000 on the lower environment for testing and development-side executions. For the mainframe, we are using the Db2 mainframe database, and we are spending around $1,000 on the Db2 mainframe database as well. All this comes out to be around $6,000. We, however, would like to have some cost reduction."
"While they outperform Tableau, there's room for improvement in Qlik's pricing structures, especially for corporate clients like us."
"On a scale of one to ten, where one is cheap, and ten is very expensive, I rate the solution a six."
"The price of the solution is expensive."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
28%
Computer Software Company
10%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
8%
Financial Services Firm
16%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Computer Software Company
8%
Government
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

Would you upgrade to more premium versions of IBM InfoSphere DataStage?
My company currently uses the free version of the product, and we are definitely switching to a paid one. We needed a tool that can help us not only integrate our data but use it effectively. For ...
Is IBM InfoSphere DataStage more difficult to use compared to other tools in the field?
I think the tool may cause some difficulties if you have not used other data integration solutions before. I have worked at companies that used different tools for data integration, and they work ...
Do you rely on IBM Cloud Paks for your data? Have you utilized this product, or do you use IBM InfoSphere DataStage without it?
IBM Cloud Paks makes a big difference in your data integration. My company has been using it alongside IBM InfoSphere DataStage and while the main product is good on its own, this one truly expands...
Which ETL tool would you recommend to populate data from OLTP to OLAP?
There are two products I know about * TimeXtender : Microsoft based, Transformation logic is quiet good and can easily be extended with T-SQL , Has a semantic layer that generates metat data for cu...
What do you like most about Qlik Compose?
The most valuable is its excellence as a graphical data representation tool and the versatility it offers, especially with drill-down capabilities.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Qlik Compose?
While they outperform Tableau, there's room for improvement in Qlik's pricing structures, especially for corporate clients like us.
 

Also Known As

No data available
Compose, Attunity Compose
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Dubai Statistics Center, Etisalat Egypt
Poly-Wood
Find out what your peers are saying about IBM InfoSphere DataStage vs. Qlik Compose and other solutions. Updated: May 2025.
860,632 professionals have used our research since 2012.