If the price of Datastage wouldn't be so prohibitive...
So I (have to) use SQL-Server DTS through ODBC and except for one file
which has some records with tens of thousands of multi-values I had no
problems so far.
I am not sure, maybe the ODBC part of Avante is even SB+ standard, but I
guess with UniSQL it wouldn't be a big deal to create SQL-schemas either.
It was a bit tricky to get some I-Descriptors to work at first, but I
soon got the hang of it.
I found it is actually quite quick - even files with hundreds of
thousands of records take only a couple of minutes to load, and since I
do the upload over night it isn't a problem.
SSIS would obviously even better than DTS since you can trap unclean
data, but if you can't have anything else and your data is clean, DTS
does the trick.
If it works with Unidata 5.2 and standard SQL Server 2000 tools, who
needs expensive ETL software?
Well, that's at least what my boss obviously thinks.
And if I could really convince him that I needed Datastage so I can use
Cognos to produce reports from Avante, the board would send him packing
if he asked them to spend nearly 100K on ETL software.
Especially since they have decided to go to an Oracle based ERP package
next year anyway, so if we buy an ETL tool it has to work for Oracle as
well.
So I rather push to upgrade to SQL Server 2008 for my reporting
database, so I can use SSIS instead of DTS.
Mecki
Tony G wrote:
Somehow when someone mentions BI there are suggestions for
Reporting tools, and with notes about ETL come notes about BI and
Reporting. In my mind (what there is of it) there is a vast
difference between these concepts. I think the confusion comes
in when a product like MITS, for example, incorporates its own
ETL functionality to accomplish what it does. Some basic
reporting tools do the same in the name of performance. But the
ETL performed by these tools is generally proprietary and cannot
be used in other contexts.
Now when you're talking about a real ETL platform like DataStage,
you should be able to use data from platform X with any platform
Y. A product like MITS or Cognos or Informer or any other could
code their front-end processes to use DataStage as a data source.
This would open them for use, even with non-MV platforms like
Oracle or DB2 - and of course products like Cognos do exactly
that - but our MV-centric colleagues generally don't think in
those directions.
Speaking of DataStage, I was discussing an association with a
company a while back for providing mainstream BI tools for MV
(that option is still considered from time to time and interested
parties are welcome to contact me). As we can all relate, I had
to spend a lot of time explaining the Pick/MV concepts which were
completely unfamiliar to them. In our discussion we decided that
the best way to use common BI tools with MV was not to link
directly to MV at all as a data source, but to use a middle-tier
ETL tool, I could provide the extraction from MV and they could
extract from the generic middle-tier using common queries and
tools. Ironically when we were discussing what tools they
already used, they mentioned DataStage. Maybe they were unique
but it seems to me that DataStage could be considered a
poster-child as a successful MV application, but somehow that
marketing value seems completely untapped. *sigh*
Tony Gravagno
Nebula Research and Development
TG@ remove.pleaseNebula-RnD.com
_______________________________________________
U2-Users mailing list
[email protected]
http://listserver.u2ug.org/mailman/listinfo/u2-users
_______________________________________________
U2-Users mailing list
[email protected]
http://listserver.u2ug.org/mailman/listinfo/u2-users
