On October of 2006 Oracle acquired Sunopsis a sofware company whose flagship product was one of the up-and-coming players in the datata warehousing arena. Sunopsis for easy integration in environments with multiple database systems and differentiated itself by adopting an Extract-Load-Transform architecture that decreased the learning curve for database developers that were immediately able to create transformation using familiar SQL syntax. By utilizing the computing power in the target database Sunopsis’ ELT architecture potentially decreased the need for additional computing power in a dedicated ETL server. Fast forward five years and Sunopsis is now Oracle Data Integrator, it is a key component of the Fusion Middleware Data Integration product line and it’s looking good, a few features that large enterprise customers will find interesting are:
- SOA enabled an can deploy and consume web services for data transformation and integration
- Integrates well into your data cleansing (names, addresses) and Master Data Management framework
- Out of the box CDC functionality with a Publish-and-Subscribe model implemented either via triggers or log mining (Oracle and DB2)
- As previously stated, by utilizing the source and target database’s computing power ODI decreases it Total Cost of Ownership (TCO)
It seems as if the merging of Oracle Warehouse Builder and Sunopsis’ functionalities has been beneficial to the end product and, in general, to the enterprise customer. Now it remains to be seen how aggressively Oracle”s sales force can take market share from ODI’s top competitors IBM Information Server and Informatica PowerCenter. Stay tunned for additional product reviews and, of course, OBIEE and Business Intelligence updates…