This document provides criteria for evaluating ETL tools and compares tools like Informatica, IBM DataStage, AbInitio, SAP BODI, Pentaho Kettel, Microsoft SSIS, and Oracle ODI. It outlines parameters for comparison including architecture, metadata support, transformations, performance and management, data quality, support for growth, third party compatibility, licensing and pricing, and vendor information. The criteria cover areas such as scalability, database support, data integration, transformations, scheduling, security, pricing, and more.

1. ETL TOOL EVALUATION CRITERIA
Asis Mohanty
CBIP, CDMP
asismohanty@gmail.com

2. Comparison Criteria
This document provides various criteria to be considered while evaluating
ETL tool such as Informatica, IBM DataStage, AbInitio, SAP BODI, Pentaho
Kettel, Microsoft SSIS, Oracle ODI ..etc
Comparison is based on following Parameters
• Architecture
• Metadata Support
• Ease of Support
• Transformations
• Performance /Management
• Data Quality & MDM
• Support for Growth
• Advance Data Transformation
• 3rd Party Compatibility
• License and Pricing
• Vendor Information

3. Architecture
Category Criteria
Scalable and Extensible Technology
Client Platform
Server Platforms
Which DBMS are supported for extraction and loading
Support for ERP Sources
Architecture Support for complex event processing
XML Support
Web Services
Pre built libraries to handle industry messaging formats like
SWIFT, ISO15022
Real Time feature
Real Time CDC
Code Reusability capability within the product
Parallelism
Code Generator

4. Architecture (Conn..)
Category Criteria
Data Transformation Method (Engine Based ?)
Building & Managing Aggregates
Support for various data types
Data Quality Check functionality or feature
Debugging and logging features
Architecture Exception Handling
How Tool Provides information about exception
Data Archival functionality
Ease of integration with external rules engines like Pega
Restarting an aborted ETL process
Memory (Minimum/ Recommended) requirement at client
machine
Memory (Minimum/ Recommended) requirement at Server
machine
Repository Backup and Recovery
Cloud Integration

5. Metadata and Setup
Category Criteria
Metadata Capture
Business View meta data
Meta data security
Web Integration support
Metadata
Versioning Support
Metadata repository's compliance to one of the industry meta
data standards
Meta data views using query tools
Category Criteria
Easy installation procedure
Ability to generate Data mart schema similar to source
Ease of setup database
Support for designing data mart
Importing data models from modeling tools

6. Transformations
Category Criteria
Filter
Format conversion
Lookup
User Defined / Custom Transformations
Scope for user defined fields
Transformation Joins
Support for external procedures
Support for XML
Support for BIG Data Integration
Support for Hadoop

7. Management & DQ
Category Criteria
Scheduling feature
Workflow Capability
Defining calendar and using it for ad-hoc scheduling
Performance monitoring of ETL process
Management
Performance Options
Specifying the atomicity of the updates
Security –Encryption
Impact analysis in-built tool
Category Criteria
Data Profiling
Data Cleansing
Data Quality and MDM MDM
Integration with external DQ Tool

8. Growth & Advance Transformation
Category Criteria
Ability to handle various source types from flat to files to major
RDBMS
Incremental upload
Support for External loader
Support for Growth Intermediate file generation during loading
Event based loading
Support for wide range of databases for storing (Target)
information
Familarity with the Tool
Support for multi-user development environment
Category Criteria
Re-usability
Advance Data Support for built in functions
Transformation Handling duplicate records
Lookup cache

9. 3rd Party Integration & Pricing
Category Criteria
Compatibility with third Compatibility of ETL Tools with EAI tools like IBM MQ Series,
party tools TIBCO, Vitria and webMethods as source/ target for the data.
Category Criteria
Consistency and re-use Global Meta data
Category Criteria
Server Licensing
Licensing & Pricing Client Licensing
Cost saving due to Re-use of Existing license
Package Licensing

10. Vendor Info
Category Criteria
2 consecutive years of profitability
Significant third party partner support
Global presence and support
Number of Customers
Vendor Info
Company financial info readily available
Company focus on ETL segment for the future
Client Base
Gartner, Forrester’s recommendations

11. About the Author
Asis Mohanty has more than 12 Years of Industry experience on Data
Warehousing and Business Intelligence field. He is a Certified Business
Intelligence Professional from www.tdwi.org and Certified Data
Management Professional from www.dama.org . Asis has worked with
Fortune 100 & IT Service organizations (IBM, Target Corporation, Infosys &
Wipro Technologies) in leadership role.
Email Id: asismohanty@gmail.com