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StreamSets pros and cons

Vendor: IBM
4.2 out of 5

Pros & Cons summary

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Prominent pros & cons

PROS

StreamSets significantly reduces the time required to fix data drift, completing tasks that previously took over an hour in just 15 minutes.
The data drift feature alerts users upfront about data ingestibility, automatically updating schema or data type changes for downstream processing.
Data Collector and Control Hub in StreamSets are user-friendly, making it accessible for those without a technical background to build data pipelines.
StreamSets offers robust integration options with a variety of protocols, languages, and origins, supporting various data media formats.
Its plugins and numerous ready connectors are particularly useful, providing ease of configuration and flexibility for managing data sources.

CONS

StreamSets needs broader integration capabilities beyond Java, particularly for .NET and other frameworks.
Real-time processing improvements are necessary, as current batch processing capabilities do not meet low latency requirements.
Issues like memory leaks and inefficient logging mechanisms complicate problem resolution.
Simplified multi-table reading from SAP HANA is lacking, necessitating manual configurations.
Documentation and support require enhancement, particularly for update guidance and advanced technical issues.
 

StreamSets Pros review quotes

reviewer912129 - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Technical Manager at a financial services firm with 501-1,000 employees
Aug 8, 2018
The Ease of configuration for pipes is amazing. It has a lot of connectors. Mainly, we can do everything with the data in the pipe. I really like the graphical interface too
reviewer1339230 - PeerSpot reviewer
Data Engineer at a energy/utilities company with 10,001+ employees
Nov 19, 2020
It is really easy to set up and the interface is easy to use.
AbhishekKatara - PeerSpot reviewer
Technical Lead at Sopra Steria
May 15, 2022
StreamSets’ data drift resilience has reduced the time it takes us to fix data drift breakages. For example, in our previous Hadoop scenario, when we were creating the Sqoop-based processes to move data from source to destinations, we were getting the job done. That took approximately an hour to an hour and a half when we did it with Hadoop. However, with the StreamSets, since it works on a data collector-based mechanism, it completes the same process in 15 minutes of time. Therefore, it has saved us around 45 minutes per data pipeline or table that we migrate. Thus, it reduced the data transfer, including the drift part, by 45 minutes.
Learn what your peers think about StreamSets. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: December 2025.
879,768 professionals have used our research since 2012.
SS
Enterprise Solutions Architect at a energy/utilities company with 1,001-5,000 employees
Jun 9, 2022
StreamSets data drift feature gives us an alert upfront so we know that the data can be ingested. Whatever the schema or data type changes, it lands automatically into the data lake without any intervention from us, but then that information is crucial to fix for downstream pipelines, which process the data into models, like Tableau and Power BI models. This is actually very useful for us. We are already seeing benefits. Our pipelines used to break when there were data drift changes, then we needed to spend about a week fixing it. Right now, we are saving one to two weeks. Though, it depends on the complexity of the pipeline, we are definitely seeing a lot of time being saved.
Karthik Rajamani - PeerSpot reviewer
Principal Engineer at Tata Consultancy Services
Jun 14, 2022
I have used Data Collector, Transformer, and Control Hub products from StreamSets. What I really like about these products is that they're very user-friendly. People who are not from a technological or core development background find it easy to get started and build data pipelines and connect to the databases. They would be comfortable like any technical person within a couple of weeks.
reviewer1889181 - PeerSpot reviewer
Data Engineer at a consultancy with 11-50 employees
Jun 21, 2022
In StreamSets, everything is in one place.
reviewer2041068 - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Network Administrator at a energy/utilities company with 201-500 employees
Dec 1, 2022
The most valuable feature is the pipelines because they enable us to pull in and push out data from different sources and to manipulate and clean things up within them.
Al Mercado - PeerSpot reviewer
AI Engineer at Techvanguard
Dec 4, 2022
The most valuable would be the GUI platform that I saw. I first saw it at a special session that StreamSets provided towards the end of the summer. I saw the way you set it up and how you have different processes going on with your data. The design experience seemed to be pretty straightforward to me in terms of how you drag and drop these nodes and connect them with arrows.
reviewer2067186 - PeerSpot reviewer
Product Marketer at a media company with 1,001-5,000 employees
Jan 6, 2023
The entire user interface is very simple and the simplicity of creating pipelines is something that I like very much about it. The design experience is very smooth.
Sumesh Gansar - PeerSpot reviewer
Product Marketing Manager at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
Jan 6, 2023
For me, the most valuable features in StreamSets have to be the Data Collector and Control Hub, but especially the Data Collector. That feature is very elegant and seamlessly works with numerous source systems.
 

StreamSets Cons review quotes

reviewer912129 - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Technical Manager at a financial services firm with 501-1,000 employees
Aug 8, 2018
I would like to see it integrate with other kinds of platforms, other than Java. We're going to have a lot of applications using .NET and other languages or frameworks. StreamSets is very helpful for the old Java platform but it's hard to integrate with the other platforms and frameworks.
reviewer1339230 - PeerSpot reviewer
Data Engineer at a energy/utilities company with 10,001+ employees
Nov 19, 2020
We've seen a couple of cases where it appears to have a memory leak or a similar problem.
AbhishekKatara - PeerSpot reviewer
Technical Lead at Sopra Steria
May 15, 2022
The logging mechanism could be improved. If I am working on a pipeline, then create a job out of it and it is running, it will generate constant logs. So, the logging mechanism could be simplified. Now, it is a bit difficult to understand and filter the logs. It takes some time.
Learn what your peers think about StreamSets. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: December 2025.
879,768 professionals have used our research since 2012.
SS
Enterprise Solutions Architect at a energy/utilities company with 1,001-5,000 employees
Jun 9, 2022
Currently, we can only use the query to read data from SAP HANA. What we would like to see, as soon as possible, is the ability to read from multiple tables from SAP HANA. That would be a really good thing that we could use immediately. For example, if you have 100 tables in SQL Server or Oracle, then you could just point it to the schema or the 100 tables and ingestion information. However, you can't do that in SAP HANA since StreamSets currently is lacking in this. They do not have a multi-table feature for SAP HANA. Therefore, a multi-table origin for SAP HANA would be helpful.
Karthik Rajamani - PeerSpot reviewer
Principal Engineer at Tata Consultancy Services
Jun 14, 2022
We create pipelines or jobs in StreamSets Control Hub. It is a great feature, but if there is a way to have a folder structure or organize the pipelines and jobs in Control Hub, it would be great. I submitted a ticket for this some time back.
reviewer1889181 - PeerSpot reviewer
Data Engineer at a consultancy with 11-50 employees
Jun 21, 2022
If you use JDBC Lookup, for example, it generally takes a long time to process data.
reviewer2041068 - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Network Administrator at a energy/utilities company with 201-500 employees
Dec 1, 2022
The design experience is the bane of our existence because their documentation is not the best. Even when they update their software, they don't publish the best information on how to update and change your pipeline configuration to make it conform to current best practices. We don't pay for the added support. We use the "freeware version." The user community, as well as the documentation they provide for the standard user, are difficult, at best.
Al Mercado - PeerSpot reviewer
AI Engineer at Techvanguard
Dec 4, 2022
The execution engine could be improved. When I was at their session, they were using some obscure platform to run. There is a controller, which controls what happens on that, but you should be able to easily do this at any of the cloud services, such as Google Cloud. You shouldn't have any issues in terms of how to run it with their online development platform or design platform, basically their execution engine. There are issues with that.
reviewer2067186 - PeerSpot reviewer
Product Marketer at a media company with 1,001-5,000 employees
Jan 6, 2023
One area for improvement could be the cloud storage server speed, as we have faced some latency issues here and there.
Sumesh Gansar - PeerSpot reviewer
Product Marketing Manager at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
Jan 6, 2023
In terms of the product, I don't think there is any room for improvement because it is very good. One small area of improvement that is very much needed is on the knowledge base side. Sometimes, it is not very clear how to set up a certain process or a certain node for a person who's using the platform for the first time.