Oracle Data Integrator vs. Informatica: What’s Better?

  • Mar 30, 2021
  • Posted By: Robert Jordan
  • Category: Data Integrator

In 2021, organizations need effective solutions to make better-informed decisions, faster time to market, maintain the quality of data and further improve the revenue. Besides that, they need technologies that perfectly align with their business process at competitive prices.

One such technology is the data integration platform, which is necessary for organizations to maintain their growth momentum.

So, what exactly is a data integration platform?

A data integration platform collects data from a concoction of resources which is then sorted and transformed to be applied in various businesses. The solution is mainly used by the professionals working in the information technology industry.

data integration diagram
Source: Assets Global

Here you can see, how the process involves extracting the data from various sources, then transformed, cleansed and loaded. Simultaneously the data has to go through a cycle of process, such as monitoring, analysis, designing, development and run before it is finally developed into an integrated data.

With a streamlined process and approach, organizations could maintain overall growth. And data integration solutions rightly help businesses in achieving the same.

There are different types of data integration techniques such as uniform data access, common user interface, middleware data integration, application-based integration, physical data integration.

Both Oracle Data Integrator and Informatica are the sought-after data integration platforms helping businesses to simplify their process and achieve their goal. But which of them outperforms the other?

It’s a complex answer as there are many factors involved in it. Still, we have tried to simplify it for better understanding.

Here, we would understand the pros and cons of each of these solutions and how it executes the process:

Oracle Data Integrator:

It offers a fully unified solution for building, and managing the complicated data warehouses. It has different elements such as data services, data movement, data management, data synchronization and the data services.
The architecture of Oracle Data Integrator:

oracle data integrator architecture
Source: Oracle

In this architecture of Oracle Data Integrator, you can see that central component is the ODI repository. It stores all the information about the configuration such as execution logs, code, scenarios and others. There are 2 repositories- the development environment and the production environment. The repository act as the version control system, and can be installed on the OLTP relational database. During design time, the programmers can generate the scenarios from the business rules they actually designed.

This platform helps to have information on a timely basis and in a consistent manner across the system. It includes a built-in lightweight database engine. Oracle data integrator offers a design approach that helps in the integration process and in defining the data transformation. Thus, it helps in the easy maintenance and development process. The tool is even known to help powerful data transformation for the Big data infrastructure. The different features of this system are data preparation, usability, message-oriented movement, scalability, data replication, synchronization, data virtualization, stream data integration, active metadata support among others.

Most of the times, this solution is used in scenarios where you need to integrate data from different environments.

oracle data integration process
Source: Oracle

In this visual representation, you can see how an ODI works. In the presentation part, you see the reports, dashboards, KPIs, alerts. In the analytic stage, data mining, OLAP and so on.

ODI offers 4 different tools for managing the various steps in an ODI project such as:

  • Security manager: It is used to manage the security in Oracle Data Integrator
  • Designer: Here metadata of the project is defined
  • Topology manager: It is used for describing the physical and logical architecture of information system
  • Operator: Here, you can monitor the entire execution of scenarios, interfaces, load plans and packages

Pros of Oracle data integrator

  • It addresses every data issue that one can expect. The solution is tightly integrated into Oracle suite of products.
  • The solution comes with many pre-written data packages.
  • There are different packages for SQL to Oracle, Oracle to SQL and other required combinations.
  • The solution helps reduce the development costs
  • It supports almost all platforms, OS and hardware within the same software.

Cons of Oracle Data Integrator

  • It doesn’t have an intuitive user interface
  • The solution even has some caching issues
  • It doesn’t have a strong versioning process
  • The solution mainly works well with the Oracle ecosystem

Pricing of Oracle Data Integrator

They don’t offer a free trial. But the pricing structure seems to be suitable for all, be it SMBs or the large enterprises.

How do Informatica works?

Informatica is an effective extract, transform and load tool. The solution can be connected with various database systems such as Mysql, RDBMS, among others. It is highly useful for migration, warehousing, and the data integration processes. It is fast and flexible.

Some benefits of this tool are it is one enterprise tool for all the data integration. It is a handy and reliable tool, besides that completely user-friendly. The deployment process also doesn’t take more than 3 months and there is ease of integration using the standard APIs and the tools.

Informatica is widely used in different industries such as healthcare, finance, manufacturing and others. The deployment is the highest in North America (52%), followed by Asia Pacific (32%), EMA (42%) and Latin America (2%). The solution is integrated mainly in the large and mid-sized enterprises.

Pros of Informatica

  • It designs the ETL mapping process in a very intuitive way. The solution can handle a large volume of data.
  • It has extensive built-in features that help define mapping as per the needs
  • You can manage the data pipelines
  • Option for transforming the data via scripting such as SQL, Python
  • Not necessary to write the complex code
  • Can be hosted on platform such as Azure
  • It offers support for different technologies such as Salesforce, MongoDB, Snowflake, PostgreSql, etc.

Cons of Informatica

  • It requires the configuration of separate plug-ins for connecting to various data sources.
  • It does not work well with the dynamic data as compared to structured data.
  • It can consume more time when there is bigger cloud replication

Pricing of Informatica

The pricing structure of Informatica is high. So, small businesses may find it challenging to acquire it.

Which is better?

So, as you see, if you consider pricing, ODI is better than Informatica, while both the software has some of the unique features to offer.

Conclusion

Both of the data integration platforms are useful for organizations. They have their USPs that is helpful for different industries in the market. As a decision-maker, you just need to make the right decision in choosing the best one that precisely matches with the needs of your organization.

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