Oracle Data Integrator (ODI) Reviews

We have been using Oracle Data Integrator for populating Financial Services Data Warehouse. Data extraction is done into a staging area from different source systems and then this data is validated and certain quality checks have been performed here. We used Oracle Data Integrator data quality checks builtin capability to perform these different data quality checks. Then data is consolidated and transformed into the staging area and finally gets landed into the data warehouse. I also used this for generating data hand-offs for other applications.

Oracle Data Integrator offers a declarative style ETL development, where you mainly use pre-built knowledge modules for doing integration tasks. As a developer, you don't need to focus on how part of the integration, you only focus on what to do. You just need to configure certain components as per your requirements and underlying execution plan and code is generated for you. For every technology there are knowledge modules available, the best optimal code is generated which eventually gets executed on database level. Our developers created best performing ETLs with very little effort leveraging this feature.

There are number of valuable features in this tool: 

• Declarative design 
• Client-server architecture model.
• Very good user access model
• Pre-built user profiles defined that give you control for access management
• Very good logging and execution logs feature which gives you complete detail of executions and you can query these in a different manner.

All ETL code is stored in repositories in underlying database schemas. The number of users can access and work on the same solution using a client tool. So distributed teams can work on this tool in an efficient manner. 

There are certain things where it can be improved. Initial solution setup seems a bit complex at the start, it should be improved because it becomes bit tough for a novice to get started on this. Sometimes error description is not helpful to understand the problem it gives some generic type of errors which are at times not that helpful to understand the underlying root cause of the issue. 

Error descriptions should be easy and specific to actual problems rather than generic lengthy descriptions. Also, another main feature that should be readily available is that there should be a source component available that can extract data from a source based on the custom query rather than giving a source data store only in the mapping. 

I have been using Oracle Data Integrator for five years. 

Good.

It's very good.

Whenever we needed Oracle Technical Support, we're able to get it in timely fashion and most of the time has been good to help in resolving the problems.

I didn't switch any tool. I'm a professional developer and my tool selection is based on client requirements. I've used both SSIS and ODI for different clients.

The initial setup is a bit complex as it needs some repo schema setup and agent setup.

We did it at our own.

Excellent.

ODI has bit on higher end in setup and pricing but it has more power as well. So it depends on your use. 

No, my selection was based on client's choice.

I think different tools have their own pros and cons, so it all depends on your overall needs.

Flexibility, ease of customization, extensive features, ease of deployment, and the ability to access to all kinds of different source system technologies. No need for extra hardware for transformation step. Easy to learn & develop.

Now, ODI has Cloud Service which you can deploy your repositories to Oracle Data Integrator Cloud Service for you to use both on prem, Big Data and cloud environments.

Oracle Data Integrator (ODI) can support any type of databases that has a jdbc driver in a native way. I have accessed and retrieve data from an Ingress database. Big data connectors are implemented to ODI 11.1.1.7 (out-of-the-box) and upper version that support many well-known Big Data architecture.

Knowledge Module architecture helps you to build your data integration activities with less effort.

You can switch to source, staging area or target to improve your querying performance. If you have to do a join from different source systems, you can decide which data to move to where and figure out the place for best output.

Variables can help you to perform loops and conditional statements in packages for helping ETL

It helped me to reduce a slowly changing dimensions type 2 with the same output, from 22,000 seconds to 168 seconds.

Loaded 10.000+ files to a table from 1000+ different sources under 20 minutes with approximate 300GB of data per day.

They need to work on the multiuser development environment and include the ability to comply with different kinds of SDLCs.

I've been using it for more than 10 years, since Oracle acquired Sunopsis.

There were no issues with the deployment.

I've experienced no issues with performance. Since sky is the limit, you can do what you want to do within ODI in several ways.

It's been able to scale for our needs. ODI will fit your needs.

10. I generally create a service request per year and they are being solved within a week.

They're very efficient.

We switched because of ODIs impressive increasement in development productivity.

It was straightforward and very easy. Almost the same as setup>next> next>next.

In-house.

Worth every penny.

There are various options in licensing, either per seat or per target core count. It depends how you want to use it.

We also looked at Informatica Power Center, AbInitio, Business Objects Data Integrator (BODI), and SQL Server Integration Services (SSIS).

If you want a robust, flexible solution with no extra hardware that is easy to learn, then ODI is the right product for you. ODI is a tool, that can talk or learn how to talk, with any database or operating system in its own language. This is the power of ODI.

We use ODI for integration services from different systems, such as finance systems and online display systems. Additionally, we integrate it with the external partners with ODI. 

We use ODI in combination with the SFTP server.

The most valuable features of ODI are the ease of development, you can have a template, and you can onboard transfer very quickly. There's a lot of knowledge modules available that we can use. If you want to connect, for example, a Sibyl, SQL, Oracle, or different products, we don't have to develop them from scratch. They are available, but if it's not, we can go into the marketplace and see if there's a connector there. Having the connector available reduces the amount of hard work needed. We only have to put the inputs and outputs. In some of the products, we use there is already integration available for ODI, which is helpful.

The interface of ODI could be improved. For example, navigating and finding functions can be difficult. For example, you have to know which step you need to go to look at where your job status is. The logical step is a bit complex compared to other tools. It's much easier to get a graphical view, but with ODI, it's graphical, plus you have to know all the other pieces that fit around it. You have to think about the logical and physical aspects.

One aspect I always struggle with is there's no single view to see which jobs are going to run or what time. You have to look around, it's very clunky. If you had a couple of agents, you can't see everything in one place. You have to go and look at an agent schedule and look at that, and then, go to another one to look. There's no single view that gives you the whole picture.

What would be nice for us is, if ODI can easily integrate to GitHub, to allow us to have all our source code in GitHub rather than within ODI. This would be a very good feature, everyone is using GitHub.

I have been using Oracle Data Integrator (ODI) for approximately two years.

Since we moved to the new version, ODI has been very stable, and we haven't had any unplanned outages. We only have had planned outages, I'm pretty happy with it.

The only issue we have had recently was when we patched ODI all the jobs that were supposed to be scheduled at 6:00, it ran seven hours earlier. It's a result of the patch. We were working with Oracle and they gave us a fix.

The solution is scalable, we can increase the agents and let it do more work.

We have approximately 12 people using the solution in my organization.

We use this solution extensively without our organization.

The technical support is very good. f you give them all the information, they seem to give you a solution pretty quickly. We have not had any issue with the support. However, we are using paid support and I am not sure if the regular support is the same.

I've used other solutions previously, such as Microsoft tools, they are much easier to set up. ODI is a bit clunky to begin operations, it requires a longer learning curve.

We are using this solution extensively.

The initial setup is complex, it took us three months.

We reached out to Oracle and a few other partners that Oracle has but, in the end, we decided we should do it ourselves. If we did not do it ourselves we wouldn't have the knowledge of how to do it in the future. We received a quotation from them and then decided, we would do it ourselves, in-house.

For all these cloud products, we have to patch them ourselves, it is not done automatically. I was expecting patching to be automatic but it is not. 

The solution is expensive because of the model they use. The cost is for the license and for support.

I would recommend it if they were an Oracle house mostly. It works very well with other Oracle products. If a business is not an Oracle shop, I would not recommend it. OBI understands Oracle E-business, Oracle CRM, and other Oracle products well. However, if you were to go to another company that had different products, ODI would struggle.

I rate Oracle Data Integrator an eight out of ten.

We primarily use the solution for digital health and sometimes automation tasks.

The integration of the solution with Oracle is very good. It's nice and easy.

The scalability is great. It's one of the reasons we chose the solution.

The stability is okay.

We found the implementation to be quick and easy.

The resource management aspect of the solution could be improved.

The migration process could be easier.

Technical support could be better. They're okay, however, their service could improve a bit.

The solution could be more reliable.

I've been dealing with the solution for around four years at this point.

The stability of the solution is pretty good. It doesn't crash or freeze on us. We don't have any bugs or glitches. 

We have about 20 people using the solution within our organization. They use it on a daily basis.

We deployed with scalability in mind. We've found it to be quite effective.

We've contacted technical support in the past. They're okay in terms of the service we provide. I would rate them seven out of ten overall. They could be a bit better.

We did previously use a variety of different solutions. So far, this product has been the best option for our organization. It has more features and integration capabilities. It's a bit more complex than other options.

The initial setup of the solution is not complex. It's very straightforward. We found it to be easy.

For simple mapping, deployment only takes about half an hour.

We handle the maintenance ourselves. Occasionally, we may reach out to Oracle for certain tasks, however, largely, we deal with everything maintenance related internally.

We did not need the help of a vendor or integrator. We did do everything on our own.

The solution isn't the most expensive, nor is it the cheapest option. In terms of pricing, it sits somewhere in the middle. Everything is covered under one license. You don't have to buy any add-ons.

We're simply an Oracle customer. We don't have a business relationship with the company.

There's no specific version of the solution that we use.

I wouldn't recommend any other services above Oracle.

Overall, I would rate the solution eight out of ten.

The most important aspect of the product is the ability to work with almost any data source or target. I can readily develop processes that use relational, file, XML, JMS messaging, web and big data sources or targets.

I can control the style of integration through "knowledge modules", and if they don’t do exactly what I want. I can write my own or customize the Oracle supplied ones.

The ability to execute third-party (or in-house developed) Java code by installing JAR files allows a great deal of flexibility; for example, I can add custom processors to do access web APIs that use token based authentication.

Another key feature is that we do not need to pass our data through some form of ETL engine hosted on a server; in some cases for example transforming data within a data warehouse all of the processing is done in single SQL queries thus reducing network traffic.

Finally, the rich SDK supplied with ODI allows developers to create virtually any form of development or deployment automation.

It allows a single skill set to handle virtually all of the data transport and transformation needs of a company. It moves the ETL processing to where the data resides and saves network traffic and the need for dedicated transformation engines - hardware that needs to be purchased, managed and supported.

There needs to better support of external version control software, currently only SVN is present, but I hear the GIT is planned in future patch.

From a DevOps point of view it would be useful to add better separation between ‘code’ and ‘executable’ exports, at the moment a piece of code will contain the embedded executable which bloats any source control objects (this may only be relevant to those the develop their own source and code control processes).

I've been using it for the last 10 years.

We've had no issues with deployment.

12cR2 is a new version, and there are a few issues with stability, but I expect most to be resolved in the first patch.

There have been no issues with the scalability.

I rarely engage with support.

As an independent consultant, I work with other ETL products, and switching is requirement of my employers. However, of the products I used recently (Informatica and Talend), I feel ODI gives me the most flexibility.

Set up of ODI Studio and the ODI repository is relatively simple, it is all done through a single JAR file executable. The complexity comes when you need to create ODI agents - there are three flavors of agent and the best choice of agent will depend on your agent management needs and infrastructure. The ODI agent executes ODI code and interacts with the host OS, typically one agent is sufficient, but more may be needed.

The licensing model has changed a few times over the years - read the Oracle price list or speak to sales.

Plan your ODI infrastructure, especially where data is transformed to ensure you get the best balance between license costs and performance. Get your developers trained in best practices so that avoid unnecessary pit falls.

ODI is integrated with Hyperion Planning, Essbase and other Oracle products. Data transfer is also easy since ODI already knows the metadata of these applications between the different databases. There is also ease of development in terms of the interface and customization with scripts, as well as data lineage and tracking, which are advantages to us.

We hadn’t upgraded in a long time, so all of our business users were creating their own solutions with spreadsheets, for example. We realized we were behind and purchased a whole stack of Oracle products that have simplified the way we move and track data. The accountants enjoy being able to reconcile where the data is and how it is changing. That’s the reason we bought the tool.

It would be nice to improve reconciliation. Additionally, better external authentication support through Microsoft Active Directory would be useful. Right now, it doesn’t support this very well. You have to buy Oracle’s special product instead.

When you start integrating products, it's not that stable. For example, if you upgrade other applications, like Hyperion Planning, it's going to break ODI.

I still need to learn a bit more about scalability in ODI, but I don't think you can scale it like DataStage.

Technical support for ODI has been awful, but I think it differs by product because support for OFSAA is wonderful. When I gave tech support a problem, the answer I got was “Oh. Well, keep testing.”

Initial setup for version 11.1.1.7 of ODI was a little difficult, but installing 12c was really easy.

I haven’t checkout out other solutions, so I don’t know where it scales, but from a developer’s standpoint, I’d give the product a seven or an eight. On infrastructure, I’d bring it down to a five.

The product separates business logic (data mapping) from how data moves from source to target. A Knowledge Module defines the steps to move data from an Oracle DB to SQL Server for example, leaving only the transformation logic for the developer to define. This results in an ability develop transformations more rapidly than say Informatica.

We spend much less time developing integrations because all we need to focus on is the business logic.

The user interface is a little slow. When compared to Informatica, the UI is more intuitive, but because it is Java based, it does hang at times. This can be tuned, but it is something that could be streamlined.

I've been using it for over five years.

There were no issues with the deployment.

We have had no issues with the stability.

It's been able to scale for our needs.

It is adequate.

It is adequate.

I have used a number of ETL tools. I like this one because it is part of Oracle Business Intelligence applications which is my primary focus. I would choose it over Informatica because you can develop more rapidly.

It was straightforward as the installation is fairly easy and well documented.

As with all software, read the installation guide cover to cover before you start.

The ability to extract from multiple sources, the flexibility of using the Knowledge module, and the ergonomics of the GUI are the features I've found most valuable.

Before using ODI, I was forced to develop programs with multiple technologies (Java, Python) to extract data from multiple sources. Now with ODI, I just have to configure the knowledge module to perform the extraction.

I think that job scheduling can be improved.

I've used it for four years.

We've had no deployment issues.

I think that ODI 11g is very stable. I've had no issues with instability.

We've had no issues scaling it for our needs.

I have never contacted customer service or technical support of Oracle for this product. If I have a problem, I try to find a solution from the Oracle community.

I've used Microsoft, but I think that ODI is simpler to use and offers more flexibility.

The initial setup was a little complex because the architecture of the product was blurred, so I needed some weeks to understand it.

I implemented with our in-house team. You should try to have good documentation before using this product.