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ETL: Buy Versus Build

The article I wrote on the decision to build or build the ETL portion of a data warehouse was published in the October issue of DM Review. This article contains some of the buy versus build material that's presented in the ETL Evaluation course I teach at The Data Warehousing Institute. Excerpt:

Is a large ETL suite overkill? This should be the first question you ask yourself. High-priced full-featured products are great if you exploit all the features; however, they are overly complex and inefficient tools if you only use a portion of what they offer.

On the other hand, if you buy a product because it is less expensive, you run the risk that it won't meet all of your needs. If it doesn't, then you'll end up paying developers to write code to do what the product can't, buying supplemental products or, at worst, you might end up with shelfware.

You can read the rest on the DM Review website if you don't subscribe.

Posted by Mark Thursday, September 30, 2004 7:36:00 PM | permalink | (0) comments