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Shrink-wrapped ETL is on SQL codejockeys’ short list
- By Stephen Swoyer
- January 1, 2006
What do IT organizations have on
tap business intelligence-wise in 2006?
A whole lot of SQL Server 2005, for
starters: With so much pent-up demand,
many SQL shops will make the move to
Microsoft's next-gen database this year.
That much is clear. But while some
SQL pros cite rising interest in performance
management solutions—homegrown and otherwise—many more
anticipate a slow but measurable uptake
of shrink-wrapped ETL tooling, courtesy
of Microsoft's SQLServer 2005 Integration
Services (SSIS).
Call it a case of both technologies
riding in on the coattails of Microsoft's
SQL Server 2005 juggernaut. Deepak
Puri, a BI professional with a prominent
U.S. auto insurance company, says his
employer (which is nominally a mixed
DB2 and SQL Server 2000 shop) has
been doing more on the SQL Server side
of the aisle lately. To some degree, Puri
attributes this to the attractiveness of
SQL Server's all-in-one BI stack. "Our
plans for SQL Server 2005 vary, [but]
we're probably looking at the BI components
and XML support more aggressively
than the other pieces,"
comments Puri, who says his employer
plans to roll out SQL Server 2005 IS,
Analysis Services and Reporting Services
next year.
Puri says he has high hopes for SSIS,
which his company expects to tap for
most of its data integration needs. At
some point, he says, SSIS might even enable
his employer to transition away from
the homegrown ETL solution it's using
on its mainframe back-end. "Data integration
is important, and we're using
SQL Server [Data Transformation Services]
in the PC world but continue with
home-grown COBOL on the mainframe,"
he says. "Hopefully, we'll be transitioning
new ETL development to Integration
Services."
SQL Server's revamped ETL facility
should appeal to a lot of other would-be
adopters, too. Take Mark Job, a SQL
Server developer with Microsoft solution
provider Immedient, who says his
company has helped several companies
deploy beta releases or technology previews
of next-gen SQL Server. While
there's a lot to like in SQL Server 2005—especially on the BI front—Job says the
new SSIS, in particular, could amount to
a killer app for that database.
"[It] creates a lot of new functionality,
along with the ability to bring along
old DTS packages by hosting the old
run-time, giving developers more time
to convert old packages," said Job. "The
visual debugging environment, separation
of data and control layers, and elevation
to transforms of a lot of what had
to be done in script before are all good
for the developer, but the big customer
opportunity here is scalability, which will
open up [Integration Services] use to a
lot more needs."
SSIS is an ideal Rx for what frustrates
David Bienstock, a systems specialist
with pre-fab housing outfit
Fleetwood Enterprises. Bienstock says
he's anxious to get his hands on SQL
Server 2005. The rub, he laments, is that
his company's IT department hasn't yet
found a way to justify the cost, licensingwise,
anyway.
"We use homegrown batch and FTP
processing. We also use PDF and TIF
splitting and recombining using command-
line programs," he comments. At
the same time, he notes, you don't get
something for nothing, and SQL Server
2005 is a more expensive proposition than its predecessor. "We are looking
into license costs for SQL2005, but I am
not sure we can justify it," he confirms,
citing similar doubts about Microsoft's
next-gen Reporting Services offering.
For Bienstock and Fleetwood, then,
SQLServer 2005 and the end of homegrown
ETL will probably have to wait
until 2007, at the earliest.