Criteria

Server capability

Sub-Criteria

MS SSIS
While only available on Windows platforms, SSIS natively supports 64-bit and multithreaded, enabling it to fully leverage the capabilities of the Windows 2003 platform. SSIS can be configured to run on cluster for partitioning/scaling.

Scalability and performance

While only available on Windows platforms, SSIS natively supports 64-bit and multithreaded, enabling it to fully leverage the capabilities of the Windows 2003 platform. Adjusting the amount of memory components (size of cache in memory buffer) is the primary advantage. SSIS can be configured to run on cluster for partitioning/scaling, but there is no automated failover capability (even if SQL is configured with it). SSIS has an internal checkpoint/restart capability at the control-flow level.

High availability

Security

SSIS supports encryption of ETL code and/or configuration parameters (such as passwords). The encryption preserves the respective access control mechanisms in all tools. SSIS uses the authorization mechanisms supported by OLE DB (Microsoft designed standards). SSIS only runs on Windows platforms including: Windows Server 2003 x86, X64, IA 64, Windows XP X64, and X86. Microsoft has no capabilities or plans to support nonWindows platforms. SSIS only provides native support for SQL Server 2005 and SQL Server 2000, and otherwise relies on connectivity via OLE DB, ADO.NET, ODBC via ADO.NET, and XML or through partner adapters. SSIS can make native Web services calls via its control flow tasks.

Platforms

Integration options

Extract connectivity

OLE DB support, ADO.NET support, ODBC support via ADO.NET, XML source files, and unstructured text via source files and raw source files. SSIS only provides native support for SQL Server 2005 and SQL Server 2000.

Load connectivity

SSIS supports OLE DB, ADO.NET, and ODBC-compliant targets and native support for SQL Server DBs. Through partners, SSIS can load natively to Oracle and DB2. It also can connect to asynchronous message queues like Microsoft Message Queues, BizTalk, and SQL. SSIS can make native Web services calls via its control flow tasks. It also provides connectivity via custom scripts in VB.NET that can call any Web service or .NET assembly. SSIS is integrated with SQL Server Data Platform, which allows customers to publish on the web.

Web services

Reusability

SSIS allows users to copy and paste objects within a project but has limited ability to reuse across projects. SSIS does not offer the same robustness of object reuse as many of its competitors.

Tool environments

SSIS provides a single visual development environment that is part of Microsoft's Business Intelligence Development Studio (BIDS) and is used across multiple roles. User can choose to integrate with Microsoft's Visual Studio Team Foundation.

Development and user SSIS provides a single visual development environment that is part of Microsoft's Business Intelligence Development interface (UI) Studio (BIDS), and is used across multiple roles. BIDS is a BI development environment that incorporates the building of SSIS packages. Collaboration SSIS stores the SSIS packages as XML files, allowing them to be checked into any source control system. User can choose to integrate with Microsoft's Visual Studio Team Foundation to provide development life-cycle support. More embedded check-in/checkout capabilites are available.

Metadata management SSIS provides a downloadable tool kit to manage metadata across the SQL Server BI platform. This metadata tool kit allows SSIS to store the metadata in a local repository and enables visual impact and lineage analysis. Customers can view metadata reports.

Administration

SSIS packages can be monitored and administered within SQL Server Management Studio. This one tool is used to manage Microsoft's entire BI platform, including SSIS. It is part of SQL Server 2005 standard, workgroup and enterprise editions. Microsoft offers a variety of support and training options across a variety of channels, formats, and languages. User documentation and SSIS UIs are available in 10 languages.

Support and training

Support

Service packs and patches are included in the price of SQL Server. A customer can add premier support or essential support to address business-critical incidents. Software assurance and additional maintenance offering including product upgrades, 24x7 problem support services.

Training

Microsoft provides online training via free eLearning classes online. Microsoft Learning provides classroom training, and several partners such as SQL Skills, SQL, and Hitachi Consulting also provide training classes for customers and partners. SQL Server 2005 documentation is provided electronically and online, and is available in simplified and traditional Chinese, English, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Russian, and Spanish.

Documentation

Internationalization

SSIS has native support for multibyte code and supports Unicode. It supports all languages in which SQL Server 2005 is shipped. The UI is also available in simplified and traditional Chinese, English, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean and Russian. SSIS provides some data federation capabilities by allowing customers to write data to a DataReader destination, but capabilities are limited to SQL Server. SQL Server 2005 replication services support change data capture (CDC) from Oracle and DB2.

Additional data integration techniques

EII (enterprise information integration)

SSIS provides some data federation capabilities by allowing customers to write data to a DataReader destination. This data can be pulled into any .NET application and can also act as a source for reporting services reports.

Change data capture

SQL Server 2005 replication services support change data capture (CDC) from Oracle and DB2, and is provided with SQL Server along with SSIS. Additional CDC capabilities are enabled via partners like Attunity.

Information management

SSIS allows developers to build custom scripts, written in VB.NET, that can customize any SSIS package. Some basic transformation tasks are predefined, but defining and creating transformations is primarily code-based. The product offers some limited data profiling options.

Transformation rules

SSIS allows developers to build custom scripts, written in VB.NET, that can customize any SSIS package. SSIS provides a library of predefined transformations that can be used to perform many required operations.

Data profiling

The product offers some limited data profiling capabilities as part of its Data Source Views. This allows customers to view outliers, data clustering, and relationships within data. Microsoft leverages partnerships with data quality vendors like ABM Datam for profiling features.

Data quality

The product offers some limited data profiling capabilities. A code builder can be used by more advanced users to create more complex data quality expressions, but Microsoft leverages partnerships with ABM Dataminers for more advanced data quality offerings. SSIS provides a free metadata tool kit that can be downloaded from the Web that provides visual data lineage and impact analysis capabilities from source systems to target analysis services cubes. Data lineage has attributes and properties of objects from target mapped all the way back to the source system.

Data lineage

Unstructured content

The product has the ability to work with unstructured text data leveraging its Term Lookup and Term Extract capabilities. Microsoft does not offer capabilities to extract information from unstructured content such as PDFs and Word docs.

Informatica
Informatica supports a threaded pipeline architecture for parallel execution, dynamic session partitioning, 64-bit support for many platforms, and heterogeneous grid and SMP environments. A redundant services configuration can be created for use in cluster.

SAS
SAS has a multiprocessor/multithreaded architecture and supports grid enablement via an OEM partnership. SAS primarily relies on high-availability options provided by hardware, OS, and high-availability solutions external to the SAS software platform. SAS has a multiprocessor/multithreaded architecture and supports grid enablement via an OEM partnership with Platform Computing's platform job scheduler and grid capabilities and monitoring service. This external scheduling tool is not as easy to integrate. SAS primarily relies on high availability options provided by hardware, OS, and high availability solutions external to the SAS software platform. SAS does offer job scheduling including job, file, and time dependencies, which supports automatic recovery. SAS supports network, database, and application security. Encryption is supported using both SAS proprietary and industry-standard mechanisms such as RC2, RC4, DES, and Triple-DES. Authentication can be done against the OS or against LDAP. The client components are deployable on a variety of Windows platforms. The server components can be deployed across multiple Windows, AIX 64, Solaris 64, HPUX, Red Hat Linux, OS/390 (MVS), and z/OS mainframe. SAS offers excellent extract and load connectivity supporting the most complex heterogeneous environments. SAS Data Integration Studio supports the publishing of jobs as a Web service including dynamic Web service deployments and support for XML streams. SAS supports native access to a variety of data sources as well as standards like ODBC, OLE DB, and JDBC. Sources include multiple file formats (including XML and standard), other data formats (such as binary, hexadecimal, octal, EBCDIC, and ASCII) All extract sources are also available as targets. SAS also provides storage of multidimensional data in cube structures and slowly changing dimensions (including Type II), and supports views and hierarchies. Real-time load techniques are also supported. SAS supports technologies such as Web services and message-oriented middleware. SAS Data Integration Studio supports the publishing of jobs as a Web service including dynamic Web service deployments and support for XML streams. Creation of data and cleansing are some of the additional services can be achieved. SAS allows connection and transformation objects to be reused across OSes, databases, and techniques. Packages can either be copied/pasted within a session, or imported and exported with a user-friendly wizard.

Informatica Power Center 8 has a visual performance monitor for analyzing session performance and supports a threaded pipeline architecture for parallel execution, dynamic session partitioning, 64-bit support for many platforms, and heterogeneous grid.

A redundant services configuration can be created for use in clustered and grid hardware environments. The product has the ability to detect environmental software or hardware failures, automatic failover, and restart and recovery of existing work.

The product supports LDAP, point-to-point data encryption based on RSA technology, adherence to network database and application security for accessing data at design and runtime, repository object security that allows for role-based folder partitioning.

Informatica 8 is certified to run on a total of 16 distinct platforms and versions including Unix (AIX, Solaris, HP-UX), Linux (Red Hat and SUSE), and Windows (many supporting both 32- and 64-bit, along with z/OS mainframe). Informatica's PowerCenter 8 offers excellent extract and load connectivity supporting the most complex heterogeneous IT environments. The product can also enable shared data services for access, integration, auditing, and reporting.

The product supports a wide range of sources including native access to leading databases, mainframes, and enterprise applications like PeopleSoft, Oracle, SAP, and Siebel. It can also access data from Web service, XML, ODBC, messaging standards.

Load connectivity is available for all sources supported for extract. In addition, the product can load a message bus, federated view, or Web service, and can support relational-based cubes, creation of slowly changing dimensions, and industry-standard flat file sources.

The product can enable shared data services for access, integration, auditing, and reporting. PowerCenter provides the Web Services Hub, which can be accessed from the design environment. This hub can expose any of the developed workflows as a Web service.

All transformation mappings are agnostic for any source, target, platform, or database and are created and stored as metadata in Informatica's repository, which can be accessed and run on any supported operating system/hardware platform combination.

The UI guides the user through the use of wizards, toolbars, dialog boxes, and drag-and-drop technology and supports multiple predefined role definitions. The product offers a robust version management and promotion subsystem that allows for concurrent user accessiblity.

Data Integration Studio provides a user-friendly graphical data flow diagram builder and useful wizards to support common tasks. The vendor offers multi-user concurrent support for multiple projects and supports basic check-in and checkout functionality.

Informatica PowerCenter 8 uses a Windows client for managing the design, test, and deployment of data integration processes. The UI guides the user through the use of wizards, toolbars, dialog boxes, and drag-and-drop technology. Debugger allows step-by-step aprroach to traverse through the mapping. The product offers a robust version management and promotion subsystem that allows for concurrent access by geographically dispersed users. Metadata granularity allows for comparisons across multiple versions, and a deployment history allows for rollbacks.

Data Integration Studio, the development tool for Enterprise Data Integration Server, is a Java application that runs on Windows. It provides a user-friendly graphical data flow diagram builder and useful wizards to support common tasks. Vendor offers multi-user concurrent support for multiple projects and supports basic check-in and checkout functionality, but relies on third parties for versioning. Lack of embedded versioning makes it difficult to revert to previous versions of code.

Metadata can be extracted from a wide variety of heterogeneous sources including prebuilt adapters for many enterprise applications, third-party data integration tools, modeling tools, BI tools, databases, XML, and CWM/XMI sources.

SAS Metadata Server (SMS) supports CWM standards for both reading and writing metadata to third-party products (e.g., Business Objects, ERwin, AllFusion, Cognos, IBM, and MicroStrategy).

Informatica's Administration Console is a Web-based client that supports administration tasks including overall platform configuration management and monitoring, performance monitoring, license management, dynamic parameter management, service management,

The SAS Management Console is a Java application that provides a single point of control for managing resources that are used throughout the SAS Enterprise Intelligence Platform. It offers embedded monitoring in grid manager, configuration, scheduling, se

Informatica offers three levels of customer support, with extended SAS offers a wide variety of support channels and training time periods and levels of dedicated resource that increase with more options across the globe. User documentation and the UI comprehensive support plans. A wide variety of role-based training are both available in six languages. options for developers, administrators, and architects is avialable

Informatica offers three levels of customer support, with extended time periods and levels of dedicated resource that increase with more comprehensive support plans. An online knowledge base is also included, and the Informatica Developer Network is another way of provding the support services.

Direct customer support options include real-time telephone technical support 24x7, which is free with subscription to software. Email-based technical support and remote support through the use of WebEx is also included.

Informatica offers a wide variety of role-based training options for developers, administrators, and architects including classroom training, self-paced Web training, and specialized on-site training.

SAS offers instructor-based courses that can be presented at customer locations or via a public course offering at one of SAS's 100 training centers located in 40 countries worldwide. Other training includes self-paced eLearning for on-demand training. SAS Data Integration documentation exceeds 6,000 pages plus interactive help screens available online. The full documentation is available online as PDF files, on CD, or in hard copy if requested. SAS Data Integration documentation is currently available in English.

Informatica 8 provides role-based documentation spanning 15 volumes. It is included in PDF form as part of the software media, through integrated context-sensitive help, and in paper form by request. The documentation is available in English, Japanese, and German.

Informatica 8 is fully internationalized and Unicode-compliant. It supports the majority of European languages and Kanji/Japanese through localized editions. It also supports use by multiple concurrent developers using different locales to support distribution.

SAS Data Integration provides localized UIs for German, English, French, Simple Chinese, Korean, and Japanese languages. The address-specific data quality components support all of North America, Australia, Denmark, France, Germany, Luxembourg and Netherlands. SAS does not currently support traditional real-time EII capabilities and does not have an embedded change data capture capability beyond leveraging built-in functionality offered by some databases.

Informatica OEMs Composite Software's technology to provide its PowerCenter 8 Federation Option. Currently, the Federation Option remains a separate tool and does not share the same metadata repository or UI as PowerCenter.

Informatica OEMs Composite Software's technology to provide its SAS does not currently support traditional real-time EII PowerCenter 8 Federation Option. This EII capability allows near-time capabilities. SAS can create data views for users that prefer access to disparate data through virtual views and complex querying. not to move data by using the Information Map Studio (IMS). IMS can be used to define how to combine the data from these disparate sources.

The product provides change data capture options for mainframe, midrange, and relational data sources. Access to the data source varies by platform and is based on the most appropriate technology for capturing transactional change.

Vendor does not have an embedded change data capture capability, beyond leveraging built-in functionality offered by some databases (Oracle and DB2). A partnership with Attunity includes basic support for VSAM CICS, IMS, ADABAS, DB2, Oracle, NonStop SQL. A library of out-of-the-box transformations is provided, as well as a transformation generator wizard. SAS' proprietary programming language used behind the scenes is very powerful but can prohibit usability when creating complex transformations or trouble shooting.

Informatica offers a comprehensive library of reusable objects including transformations, maplets, expressions, and functions. An expression editor is also available for user-defined transformations and customization. Two data profiling options are currently available.

Informatica offers a comprehensive library of reusable objects including transformations, maplets, expressions, and functions. An expression editor is also available for user-defined transformations and customization, and extension languages such as Java, XML.

A library of out-of-the-box transformations is provided as well as a transformation generator wizard, which allows users to register homegrown transformation rules. Once defined, the homegrown transformations can be used using drag-and-drop capability. SAS Data Integration features technology from SAS DataFlux subsidiary for data profiling. Drill-through profiling capabilities include analysis of source columns to infer metadata based on actual data including the ability to determine primary keys of the table.

Two data profiling options are currently available. The first level is a Data Profiling Option extension to PowerCenter, which allows for column, table, and cross-table profiling capabilities. Another option is Data Explorer, the data profiling technology that provides a complete set of data investigation, discovery, and mapping tools to scan every single data record from any source.

Informatica offers an additional Data Cleanse and Match Option for data standardization, validation, enrichment, and matching. A number of out-of-the-box cleansing and validation objects exist for common functions such as address cleansing and social security number cleansing. Two levels of data lineage analysis are supported. The first is within a transformation mapping where an individual data element can be visually traced from source through transformation objects to target within the ETL process. The second level allows to track from a BI report to datamart/data warehouse to source system.

Data Integration features technology from DataFlux subsidiary to provide robust data quality management capabilities. Out-of-the-box quality rules primarily focus on customer data, with some support for product- and itemspecific data. SAS offers upstream and downstream data lineage and impact-analysis capabilities. Output is provided in both textual and graphical representations, and works on both column and table levels. With the appropriate configuration, the analysis can span across mutiple source systems.

Informatica offers an Unstructured Data Option (recently acquired Itemfield technology), which can be accessed directly from PowerCenter but in a different design environment, to enable parsing of data from unstructured content sources such as Word, Excel.

SAS provides some support for text mining, including text access and advanced text-processing capabilities within its proprietary 4GL language, as well as its Text Miner offering, but no additional functionality or partnerships to access other forms of unstructured content.

BO Data Integrator
Data Integrator includes support for parallelism and grid computing for high performance, and it uses an intelligent load distribution across a server cluster among other techniques to ensure high availability. Embedded role-based security configuration is possible. To meet high volume and scalability requirements, Data Integrator supports parallelism and grid computing. Specific features include table partitioning, native bulk load for most databases, degree of parallelism, parallel process threads, grid computing. Data Integrator uses an intelligent load distribution across a server cluster and is based on CPU usage, available memory, and algorithms to determine fastest execution within a group. Recovery mechanisms include checkpointing, restart from point of failure. Data Integrator provides a role-based security environment providing appropriate access to objects in a shared central repository. Role-based access is defined in Web-based administrator along with more granular object-level access (transformations, mappings).

SYBASE
Sybase ETL supports a grid architecture and is also multithreaded, but the configuration and management of that environment are not supported by the ETL software itself. Sybase ETL requires integration with a third-party vendor to support high availability. Sybase ETL (formerly Solonde) supports a grid architecture and is also multithreaded, but the configuration and management of that environment are not supported by the ETL software itself.

Sybase ETL requires integration with a third-party vendor (such as Veritas Cluster) to support high availability. A manual process would be required to support checkpointing.

Username/password authentication is provided for repository and database access. Within the ETL product, passwords and other sensitive data are stored in encrypted manner. Sybase ETL does not support a concept of role-based security outside of repository.

The evaluated version of Data Integrator can run on 23 distinct Win32 (XP, 2000, and 2003 server), Linux (Red Hat platforms and versions including Windows, Linux (Red Hat 3.0, 4.0, and SUSE 9), Solaris 64 (2.9 and 2.10), HPand SUSE), and Unix (Solaris, HP-UX, and AIX). UX, and AIX.

DI's (Data Integrator) open service architecture offers excellent extract and load connectivity, including native database access to all major databases, mainframe access, multiple flat file formats, and packaged apps integration.

Sybase currently supports native connectivity to a number of relational databases and can read XML, text files, ODBC, flat files, and Weblogs. Some connectivity to SAP exists, but no other enterprise apps are currently supported. Sybase currently supports connectivity to Oracle, DB2, SQL Server, ASE, IQ, XML, and text files. Sybase uses native drivers for Oracle 9.2, ASE 12.5 and 15.0, IQ 12.7, and DB2 8.1. Support is also included for ODBC, flat files, and Weblogs. Sybase ETL provides the ability to update slowly changing dimensions, read flat files, and provide realtime feeds via EII (Sybase Avaki), Replication Server, and Unwired Orchestrator (EAI). Sybase does offer native load support for Sybase IQ. Sybase ETL can read from a variety of services including SOAP and XMLRPC, but currently does not have a tool-supported method to publish data integration objects as a Web service. SOA services can pull Web service query from Data Federation product. Transformations can be cut and pasted across multiple projects. Users can also move and share projects or parts of projects between multiple repositories. Sybase does not have the ability to reuse objects across its data integration offerings (Viz..Avaki EII)

Data Integrator provides native connectivity to all major databases (including support for native bulk and batch loading using the RDBMS-provided bulk loaders). Connectivity also includes access to a variety of mainframe (e.g., ADABAS, DB2, and VASM), flat files. Target formats include delimited or fixed-width flat file, realtime messages, XML file, XML message, COBOL files, slowly changing dimensions, and hierarchies. Real-time load techniques include XML messages, XML files, EAI messages (JMS), flat files, SQL dumps are supported. Data Integrator offers an open services architecture that uses the following technologies: Web services (SOAP, UDDI), JMS, Oracle Apps, SAP ABAP, SAP BAPI, SAP IDoc, native adapters for all other ERP apps, and an adapter SDK for all other systems.

All data flows and workflows are reusable objects. Parts of a data flow (transforms) can be grouped in an embedded data flow and can be reused in other data flows independent of database and OS platforms.

ETL development for Data Integrator (DI) is performed in a single UI that allows the user to develop and manage projects, real-time/batch jobs, workflows, and data flows, and leverages a drag-and-drop graphical interface, wizards, and a library of predefined functions.

There is a single-user interface for Sybase ETL, but no integration yet between other Sybase data integration offerings and no role-based functionality. When using a shared repository, open projects will be locked as read-only to ensure that only one user is actively working on it. The development environment is a Java-based GUI that uses drag-and-drop and wizard capabilities. A simulation environment is also integrated into the GUI to incrementally step through ETL jobs using actual data before implementing. When using a shared repository, open projects will be locked as read-only to ensure only one user can change at a time. No offline check-in and checkout capabilities offered. Multiple developers can work on the different projects only when using separate local respositories. Every project or job is stored as an (encrypted) XML in an open repository. Supports some level of reuse if user creates a transformation using the repository as a source. No additional metadata standards or capabilities are currently supported within Sybase.

ETL development for DI is performed in a single UI, including basic data profiling and data quality. The design interface is a Windows client that allows the user to develop and manage projects, real-time/batch jobs, workflows, and offers a dragand-drop capability. If the end customer chooses to define the recommended central repository architecture, Data Integrator can support team-based development on multiple projects with access to metadata objects that are version controlled for check-in and checkout onto a local repository.

Data Integrator metadata can be stored in any of the major relationship databases. The metadata managed by Business Objects is open, and the schema for the metadata repository is published. Standards supported are CWM, ERwin XML, XMI, and XML schemas.

Data Integrator provides Web-based administration as well as a multi-user check-in and checkout environment. Supported browsers include IE 5.5 and newer versions and Netscape 7.0.2. Admin capabilities include scheduling, monitoring and executing batch job Business Objects offers world-class support in various formats and languages, as well as training through internal resources and via partners. User documentation is offered in English and Japanese, and Data Integrator's UI has been localized to English and Japanese. The vendor offers support for all Business Objects products through annual for-fee support and maintenance agreements. All customers under valid agreements are entitled to local business day telephone support from centers around the world in 10 local languages.

The development environment contains administration tools that provide for monitoring and discovery of ETL grid engines. The environment is available in the Windows platform.

Sybase offers a tiered support structure across a variety of channels and formats, and both Webbased and on-site training are offered. User documentation and UIs are available in English and German. Sybase provides three tiers of 24x7 "follow-the-sun" support, at different costs for each. These include basic, extended, and enterprise. The more robust support plans offer increased number of support contacts, reduced response times, more personalized service.

Business Objects provides training through internal resources Both Web-based and on-site training are provided. and via partners located in all geographies. Relevant training for Data Integrator includes a four-day core instructor-led class (public or on-site), a 24-hour core eLearning offering, and a Web based CBTcourse Data Integrator ships with a set of documents including guides Documentation is provided in PDF format and Flash for optimizations, tips and tricks, design strategies, as well as demos, and is available in English and German. detailed product usage documentation. The Adobe PDF version of the technical user manual comes with the software installation

Data Integrators UI has been localized to Japanese and Full Unicode support is present to handle multibyte simplified Chinese (in addition to English). Data Integrator can data for the simulation and execution of jobs. English process all multibyte data and Unicode. All languages are and German are supported as native UI languages. processed.

Data Federator (DF) is Business Objects' enterprise information integration offering and uses a codeless, menudriven visual design UI for developers to define rules and map sources to a target. DF offers a mapping rule language but a more advanced script capabilities. Data Federator (DF) is Business Objects' EII offering. DF uses a codeless, menu-driven visual design UI for developers to define rules and map sources to a target. Transformations in DF include predefined aggregation with some data manipulations available.

Sybase offers EII functionality through its Data Federation product (formerly Avaki). It is a capable EII product with a visual design component and does support two-phase commits and data caching, but it is not as feature-rich as some other EII tools. Sybase offers EII functionality through its Data Federation product (formerly Avaki). Data Federation also requires Sybase WorkSpace Data Architect, which is the development-side tool. Sybase's popular PowerDesigner data modeling tool does not offer seamless integration. Sybase does not offer change data capture capabilities embedded within its ETL product, but it does offer Sybase Real-Time Data Services as a complementary offering with the ability to capture real-time events from Oracle, SQL Server, and DB2. Sybase ETL offers some predefined transformation objects and 200 to 400 commands/functions that can be leveraged. While functional, ease of creation and ability to handle more complex data quality transformations are not up to par with competing offerings. Sybase ETL offers some predefined transformation objects and 200 to 400 commands/functions that can be leveraged, but many of the graphical components require typing additional expressions, so they are less user-friendly.

Business Objects supports CDC capabilities for all natively supported databases and mainframes. The CDC support is on a data level (change-date, log tables, etc.), database level (database built-in CDC mechanisms), and application level (SAP IDocs, Siebel CRM). Data Integrator (DI) offers more than 100 predefined transformations and comes with a powerful visual editor and wizard for building lookups. DI's data profiling includes the ability to preview and profile data in source, target, and transformation objects.

Data Integrator offers more than 100 predefined transformations and comes with a powerful visual editor and wizard for building lookups. Data Integrator offers transformations that address commonly used functions in data warehousing, data validation, and data profiling.

Data Integrator includes profiling capabilities to preview and Sybase ETL does not yet offer a data profiling profile data in source, target, and transformation objects. capability or integration partnerships. Features include profiling and analysis of column characteristics, cross-table relationships, distinct values, nulls, min and max functions.

With the Firstlogic acquisition, Business Objects acquired one Sybase ETL does not yet offer a data quality of the leading data quality software products, and Business capability or integration partnerships. Objects had previously invested in integration between its products, which allows Data Integrator users to call data quality service options. "Report to source" data lineage and "source to BI report" impact analysis is supported by Business Objects' suite of products. Data lineage capabilities are available both in Data Integrator (DI) and Metadata Manager (MM), but MM is more extensible. Sybase offers some lineage capabilities within its PowerDesigner modeling tool, but Sybase ETL does not yet offer data lineage.

Business Objects relies on partners Attensity and Clarabridge to deliver support for unstructured content. Data Integrator also provides an SDK (a Java-based framework) for customers and partners to build their own connectivities to unstructured data sources.

Sybase ETL does not have the ability to access unstructured content. A related offering within Data Integration Suite is Sybase Search, which can be used to search multiple content formats in a result output that can be read by Sybase ETL.

IBM Ascential
IBM offers a multiprocess, parallelized, grid-based distributed runtime architecture where users can design sequentially and run in parallel. Tools are provided to assist in setup in a fault-tolerant hardware environment.

IBM offers a multiprocess, parallelized, grid-based distributed runtime architecture where users can design sequentially and run in parallel. A new graphical performance analysis feature provides insight into machine utilization and performance statistics.

IBM's software provides mechanisms for checkpointing and restarting jobs. Tools are provided to assist in setup in a faulttolerant hardware environment. Supports grid operations, which allows nodes to be removed without interruption.

IBM's Information Server Web console is a Web-based interface providing single sign-on across the product modules, and providing a centralized set of controls for administering users, groups, and roles. Security can leverage existing LDAP and active directory authentications. Development clients are based on Windows. The server runs in z/OS, MVS, Unix (AIX, Solaris, HP-UX), Windows, and Linux (Red Hat and SUSE).

IBM offers excellent extract and load connectivity supporting the most complex heterogeneous environments. Shared services can be published from any of the Information Server product modules and directly integrate with WebSphere Process Server.

IBM's Information Server supports a wide array of connectivity including native connectivity to major RDBMSes, mainframes, packaged applications, flat files, message queues, business intelligence and data warehousing environments, and unstructured content. All extract sources supported by IIS are also available targets. IIS also supports slowly changing dimensions and metadata exchange with sources/targets using SAP BW, Cognos, MicroStrategy, Hyperion Solutions, Business Objects, IBM DB2 Cube Views, Erwin. Shared services can be published from any of the Information Server product modules using WebSphere Information Services Director (WISD). WISD creates J2EE artifacts that are run and managed in the client's application server.

Connection object properties can be shared between users regardless of the platform. Also, transformation objects, data quality matching rules, or entire segments of data flows can be reused through IBM's "shared container" feature.

With IBM's Information Server (IIS) release, the DataStage and QualityStage Designer have been unified into a single, wellintegrated design environment and incorporate role-based design into the platform.

With this Information Server release, the DataStage and QualityStage Designer (in Windows) have been unified into a single, well-integrated design environment. The interface leverages GUI-driven, drag-and-drop design on a graphical palette. IBM Information Server allows multiple users to work in a project at the same time to collaborate. A common repository with a common model is used across the development and operations processes.

IBM WebSphere Business Glossary, WebSphere Metadata Server, and IBM WebSphere MetaBroker are the product components used to integrate and manage business and technical metadata within Information Server.

Most administration tasks are completed through a central, Webbased administration console that provides unified logging, user and security administration, and reporting interfaces. Managing users, logs, modeling, and other admin tasks within Federation

IBM offers best-in-class support and training, offering a wide selection of channels, formats, and languages for customers to choose from. User documentation is also provided in a variety of formats and languages, but the user interface is currently only in English Standard IBM Passport Advantage support provides customers with 24x7 Severity 1 support. In addition, IBM offers a number of premium support programs offering increased support entitlements up to and including on-site support.

Training programs are provided via public scheduled sessions, customer on-site, and via IBM's FlexLearning Web-based offering. Customized on-site courses are also available for customers. Mobile academies are available to minimize a customers onsite setup difficulties. Documentation is provided in the following formats: books, CDs, HTML and XHTML, Windows help, and PDFs. Online tutorials, "help" and "getting started" embedded assistance are also available. Available languages include English, Brazilian Portuguese.

IBM Information Server supports NLS, including doublebyte/multibyte character sets, Unicode, and currencies. The interface is initially available in English only. IBM has stated future plans to translate the interface into Brazilian Portuguese as well.

WebSphere Federation Server is IBM's EII offering, and features include query optimization, federated two-phase commit, federated stored procedures, and graphical federation view design.

WebSphere Federation Server is IBM's EII offering, and is part of its IIS platform. Features include query optimization, federated two-phase commit, federated stored procedures, and graphical federation view design.

IBM supports change data capture (CDC) through a number of offerings including WebSphere DataStage CDC, WebSphere Event Publisher, WebSphere SQL and Q Replication. Sources include DB2 (on all platforms), Oracle, SQL Server, Sybase, Informix, SAP and Siebel. DataStage (DS) provides more than 50 prebuilt components and 100 built-in data transformation routines. An open API and scripting language allows users to further extend transformations. IBM's data profiling product is Information Analyzer (IA).

DataStage provides more than 50 prebuilt components and 100 built-in data transformation routines. An open API and scripting language allows users to further extend transformations. In addition, external routines written in other languages, like Java, C are supported. IBM's data profiling product is Information Analyzer (formerly ProfileStage), which supports column, table, and cross-table analysis. Profiling includes domain analysis of data completeness, validity, and format conformity and suggests inferred data class mappings.

QualityStage (QS) shares the same UI, engine, and metamodel (Metadata Server) as DataStage and Information Analyzer. QualityStage automates the conversion of data into verified standard formats using probabilistic matching.

Data lineage analysis including visual impact analysis, data lineage, integrated search and query, and a wide range of out-ofthe-box reports can be performed in either the DataStage and QualityStage UI or in Business Glossary, but is more robust in DS/QS.

WebSphere Federation Server supports multiple types of unstructured data access, including MQ messages, flat files, XML formatted files, and Web services.