Oracle Data Integrator (ODI) Reviews

Several projects benefited from the ODI data integration capabilities such as Loading OLTP system's data to Data warehouses, pulling data from cloud-based databases and loading to on-premises DW, for example: extracting data from a SQL server which is based on Azure infrastructure. 

Perform data integration from cloud to cloud.

Data migration between OLTP systems. 

Event-based integration such SOA, for example, BPEL performed calls of ODI scenarios based on EBS events.

All projects where I have implemented ODI solution highly benefited of high data volume integration.

There are several very important features that we use daily.

• All our systems can be widely integrated by ODI, such as transactional systems, our data warehouses, and B2B integration.
• ODI is really powerful for BI projects with traditional star-schema loads. For example, we integrated Salesforce to an Oracle data warehouse with it.ODI is a platform agnostic, you may have any data source and any target to integrate and ODI will enable you to connect.
• It facilitates real-time data replication from Microsoft SQL Server to an operational database sitting on Oracle Database.
• It provides for legacy systems integration. It integrates any SQL server database.

There is always room for improvement, even when something is really good, but I think ODI is one of the best ETL tools in the market. However, I've always waited for the web service feature to be improved in next versions, so at last the 12C version the web service has been improved, some of the limitations of the 11g version were solved. Also, it would be really good if Oracle considered enabling the tool to integrate with some other platforms that are deprecated simply for commercial reasons, although it looks like the cloud option offers some extra connectors (for example, in Salesforce CRM).

I've never had any issues with stability.

I haven't had any issues with scalability.

Technical service is a 6, and Oracle needs to improve this.

Besides ODI I have used SSIS and Power Center Informatica, both are similar and typical ETL tools, ODI up until 11g version had some differences, for example in ODI 11g we call the integration object as"Interface" wheres in  Informatica it is called "Mappings" which has been implemented in the ODI 12c version.

I still could see the Oracle solution being more robust and more logical, not to mention when it comes to customization, in ODI I felt more freedom to develop and customize the built-in code and designer objects such as the models, interfaces, for example, you can run updates in the repository tables"SNP's".

Also, ODI handles high data volume more efficiently, of course, your database must be well tuned a good hardware helps a lot. The other difference is that you have more flexibility to manage the ODI metadata since everything is based on database .

Getting the right JDK during agent config on Solaris was challenging on one occasion. It needs a Solaris expert to do this but in general when one knows the bits and pieces of the tool it should be straight forward .

I was usually part of the implementation team to implement the product .

oracle would better provide these kind of information .

The setup of the environment requires experts on site, but it is very worth it since at first for customers it can be quite complex. The vendor needs to enable the customer on a frequent basis during implementation, but the results are great.

To have a common ETL tool in the DW team, start a common way of ETL development, set up a process registry, and daily process flow.

• It increased ETL development efficiency 1/3 in time.
• It has a short learning curve for newcomers, compared to previous MS DTS packages and scripting.

• Reusing existing ETL development pattern in the next similar tasks.
• It's flexible to add new common procedures.
• Knowledge modules can be modified to fix small issues.

• ETL process registry solution is missing.
• To manage dependencies between loading packages.
• Versioning logic and release process are not well supported.

Multiple data sources: "Most" of them, Oracle databases (some MS SQL, some Sybase, lots of files and some web services). Because the environment was overwhelmingly Oracle, ODI (we started from OWB) was a much better and cost-effective solution for us than Informatica.

Far more efficient and robust than OWB, (it was the natural evolution for us).

Separate environments for dev, test and prod from one management facility.

• Click intensive on mapping
• Lots of mouse clicking
• GUI could be improved.
  

High volume batch loads to move data from transactional systems into the decision support warehouse.

It worked fine, but we needed a tool that would include quality and master data seamlessly.  This is more of a standalone ETL tool.

I found nothing overly amazing about this tool, although I appreciate its ability to easily load slowly changing dimensions.

It lacks a suite of tools suitable for fully processing data and moving it into decision support warehouses.

We use ODI to integrate data from the OLTP database to the data warehouse. The source database systems including Oracle, MySQL, flat files... Our business background is OTA and the total data is about 100T.

In our DW/BI solution, ODI is the main tool to integrate the data as a daily batch. Besides loading data, we do most of our transformations in ODI. ODI is quick to use.

Most of the functions are very straightforward, like the data model, mapping, package, and load plan. Thus, a new user could get started very fast. 

The ODI scheduler for agent sometime fails with no sign, which impact the ETL solution severely.

The property window in the ODI studio always does not refresh as it should. 

Sometimes, the mapping or package automatically gets edited.

The stability of the ODI studio is not strong enough. It crashes occasionally. 

Informatica and SSIS are also good ETL tools besides ODI.

The installation of the client tool: ODI studio is easy.

Basically the ETL tools is determined by the database.

We are moving data from everywhere to everywhere else all the time. We will be moving data to a cloud solution in the future and ODI seems to be able to do it as well.

The tool is declarative, and it only runs on the target staging databases, so I have full control over it and I can change the SQL that the tool generates. I do not have to maintain a separate ETL instance. I can change the SQL when something is not performing correctly.

It can integrate with more recent databases like Cassandra, Hadoop, and other more recent Big Data databases. Going forward, that is very important.

When I do a BI type of project, I like to pick the simplest declarative solution that I can find. So ODI appeals to me at a base solution level, but that sometimes puts a lot of burden on me personally to fix all of the nuances of the platform that I am integrating to and from. Some might argue this is just a part of the job, but if there is an add-on tool to hide the performance issues and solve them for me, then I might be interested in that as it provides me value. I can see a great deal of value of ODI plus an add-on solution that might know how to avoid performance issues on the target database with, for example, the proper use of SQL functions.

It is an ETL tool, which does the extract, transform, and load. 

At this point we are seeing what we need, so I don't know if there is anything, any big improvements that are needed. This is basically just transforming and loading the data. It's doing its job.

I rate it a seven out of 10 because there is room for growth because ODI is still new, in comparison to Informatica, which is a mature product.

We have been using it now for two years.

So far it has provided what we need, it's working fine.

It's scalable. Right now, we have a pilot project that we started with ODI, which went fine. We will be ramping that up for the other integrations and hopefully that will all go fine.

I think the support at Oracle is tremendous. We have a whole stack of Oracle products and the support with Oracle has always been very good.

We chose ODI because we have the Oracle Stack and we wanted to be in the Oracle space. We wanted a tool that will work long-term for Oracle, so that's why we chose ODI.

All ODI, all the ETL tools, they have mappings and knowledge bases and the like. Based on that, I don't think it is too complicated. It is fine. There is a learning curve, but this is going to be orchestrated by IT, not by business users, so I think it's fine.

I would definitely recommend the ODI. The reason is that now Oracle, after a long time, has put its weight behind an ETL tool, which is ODI, and so Oracle is going to stand behind it, which means that it has a long life. That's another reason which we chose it. 

Informatica is a gold standard in ETL and, before ODI, Informatica used to be the king of the ETL. Now, because Oracle is putting its weight behind this tool we think that, long-term, ODI will have a better future. When we had the option of choosing an ETL tool, we went with ODI because we wanted to choose something for the long-term.