What Data Warehouse Automation tools are on the market

3 MIN READ The 5 top most searched Data Warehouse Automation tools on the market compared with GoogleTrends is telling you that WhereScape is first before TimeXtender and BiReady (new Attunity Compose) over the last year. See the picture in full size or go directly to GoogleTrend comparison and change to your own needs.

Although the analysis is not representative, it still gives some insights and a good overview to size and presumably usage compared to each other, worldwide. Please consider that WhereScape and TimeXtender have more search results as the company name is the same as their product, meaning some of them are dedicated to the company name rather the Data Warehouse Automation (DWA) tool itself. And BimlFlex just published their first release and biGENiUS is rather new to market their product actively, they will probably increase slightly in the soon future.

Data Warehouse Automation Tools on the market

As you can imagine, there are plenty of tools on the market. From open-source, to very expensive once, and all with different features. To narrow down the scope you need to distinguish between these two approaches model-driven and data-driven.

Model-driven approach

• You design your models with the business and when approved you search for the source data and import them to the representative model
• More likely to use only the data you need instead the data you might need
• Benefits of that is that business requirements are clearly documented up front
• Contra
  • Slow as you need to have many inputs from the business which can be challenging and slow in bigger companies for example
  • Can be difficult to synchronise the model with the physical model
  • Can have wrong expectations as you can model a dimension conceptual but at the end, you don’t have the data available

 Data-driven approach

• You quickly generate a model with the data which is available
• Developer approach as the way to communicate to the business by showing already the end results with a BI tool or MS Excel
• The benefit is you only work with data that is actually there and the business has already a real-life model that represents the data and can be developed. This suits very well with the agile methodology of Data Warehouse Automation tools
• Contra
  • It doesn’t easily show rules or data relationship between the model and real source data to the business

An overview some years back (Nov 2015) from the white paper by Eckerson:

The Data Warehouse Automation tools

For the complete overview, Hans Michiels created a very comprehensive guide for that manner where you can filter by any criteria and compare up to 3 different tools at the same time. Because I couldn’t do it better 🙂 , here the link:

Another – a bit older overview – from the vendor ajilius – http://ajilius.com/competitors/

Quick Links

Links to the Data Warehouse Automation tools related to MS SQL Server in alphabetical order.

• Attunity Compose – attunity.com/agile-data-warehouse-automation
• biGENiUS – bigenius.info/about-bigenius
• BimlFlex – preview.varigence.com/BimlFlex
• TimeXtender / Discovery Hub – timextender.com/discovery-hub
• WhereScape RED – wherescape.com/products-services/wherescape-red/

The Survey

A data warehouse automation tools survey again by Hans Michiels (with inputs from me 😉 ) about:

• job roles used by developers
• familiarity with the investigated tools
• product satisfaction
• value for the money
• other tools that were mentioned
• comments given about all the tools
• used technologies
• and the conclusion / wrap up

Link: The Data Warehouse Automation tools Survey results

Prices

One of the only ones who provide transparent pricing is BimlFlex. Other vendors are not transparent and hand over prices on request. Below the costs of BimlFlex:

• Small Business (1 – 100 Employees)
  • Perpetual – $34,995 | Subscription* – $3,795/mo
• Mid-size Business (101 – 1,000 Employees)
  • Perpetual – $44,995 | Subscription* – $4,795/mo
• Large Business (1,001 – 2,500 Employees)
  • Perpetual – $74,995 | Subscription* – $7,995/mo
• Enterprise (2,501 – 5,000 Employees)
  • Perpetual – $104,995 | Subscription* – $10,995/mo

More information on their website: BimlFlex – upfront-pricing

Back to the Data Warehouse Automation (DWA) – Series overview.

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