IBM DataStage vs. SolarWinds Task Factory

Excellent Cloud data mapping tool and easy creating multiple project data analytics in real-time and the report distribution are excellent via this IBM product. Easy tool to provide data visualization and the integration is effective and helpful to migrating huge amounts of data across other platforms and different websites insights gathering.

Incentivized

Since I started working with this great tool all data analysis programs have been running effectively. Implementation of projects and tasks have been effective and reliable. Data collected from each department gives us working plan on better management of various programs. The Dimension Merge SCD Transform helps us to load large volumes of data within a short period of time.

Incentivized

• Very reliable in handling data extraction, data transformation and loading
• Flexibility in connecting to different type of databases, relational or non-relational
• Great features such as parallel processing, hash handling, etc.
• You can also take advantage of its FTP functions, and scheduling features if you need to.

Incentivized

• The Slowly Changing Dimension Component saves us a huge amount if time compared to the native SSIS component.
• JSON Transform is really useful to convert record and send it to rest API.
• The advanced derived columns allow us to use really cool functions that are not available in the regular transforms.

Incentivized

• You must understand and know the algorithms, since the wrong use of them generates more time in processing.
• Metadata. You need to develop with connectors, and taking all the Metadata from the menu, all the data that you complete manually, you can't track it.

Incentivized

• It was built by Pragmatic Works who sold it to SentryOne and now Solar Winds, concerned about future support. SolarWinds is discontinuing support for related products such as BiXpress.
• Had issues with connecting to certain versions of SQL Server - would fail when deploying one package - had to deploy the entire solutions.
• Occasional random failures observed with the Filter tranform.

Incentivized

Task Factory has become a key product for our use of doing ETL work in SSIS. Their custom SSIS components allow us to work simply on the data engineering side of things. We can ignore the lower level work needed to connect to disparate data sources. This allows us to work faster and provide more value to the business

Incentivized

Because it is a flexible tool that can manage many flows and create a strong solution with a interesting use of variables. Easy to scale up as you can copy jobs arleady build and modify them. SQL queries allow to be fast in development and have the pushdown feature, but you loose a little of user friendly look. Metadata management is not strong as a visual feature, but can be determine by job codes.

Incentivized

Compared to some of the other transformations I have worked with, it really is pretty simple for the type of functionality you get

Incentivized

It could load thousands of records in seconds. But in the Parallel version, you need to understand how to particionate the data. If you use the algorithms erroneously, or the functionalities that it gives for the parsing of data, the performance can fall drastically, even with few records. It is necessary to have people with experience to be able to determine which algorithm to use and understand why.

Incentivized

IBM offers different levels of support but in my experience being and IBM shop helps to get direct support from more knowledgeable technicians from IBM. Not sure on the cost of having this kind of support, but I know there's also general support and community blogs and websites on the Internet make it easy to troubleshoot issues whenever there's need for that.

Incentivized

Overall, the best vendor we currently have on the data side of the house. No issues, issues are resolved very quickly and upgrades go without any issues.

Incentivized

Overall it went smoothly. Had a couple of gotchas with licensing and upgrading but nothing that really stopped us.

Incentivized

No, it wasn’t my decision to use such an ETL product. I’m just the administrator at this point. I’ve heard there are other products there that are even on cloud support. That is much easier to use, more agile, and user-friendly. That doesn’t have that barrier from user to administrator to the developer standpoint.

I've not found too many tools to bolt onto SSIS that encompass what you get with Task Factory. I have used some Enterprise ETL tools like Dell's Boomi, but did not find it to be very intuitive. Task Factory does not leave you guessing how to use its components. Additionally, their support is very responsive and helpful.

Incentivized

• Not directly related to ROI or cost figures. Only comment here is that IBM tools tend to be more costly than average ETL tools, but it depends on if the company is an IBM shop.
• One positive aspect is the company has had not a need to switch ETL tool for years.
• Upgrading to newer versions of the tool brings flexibility in the tool and up-to-date features in relation to other applications.

Incentivized

• We were able to support our developers with Task Factory features and reduce the development time by 40%.
• Recently Task Factory has changed their pricing module and it seems to be pretty costly for our process. Our business team has started to evaluate whether this is worth it going forward.

Incentivized