Astera Centerprise Erfahrungen

I was looking for a good ETL tool for my School District Project. Our budget was limited as I have taken up a project to build a EDW with a Shoe String Budget. So saving every penny is part of my project goals. At the same time, I want all the products to be salable, reliable and have high standards. I had the a list of criteria for the ETL product selection. Additional to the cost, I have looked at functionality, support and warranty, availability and adaptability. Centerprise Data Integrator was not in my original list as I was not heard this before. When I saw this name on my search, I did not had high hopes. But included in the mix of my tool comparison. We bought the product and we are very happy with it. I was surprised with its functionality. It is a very easy to use product and easy to learn. Further I am surprised with their product support. I am planning to use Centerprise Data Integrator for my future projects.

The product allowed us to have a low barrier of entry to create ETL packages for our data warehouse and analytics platform. It also opens up integration between our already-owned assets. We can create high quality data integration without needing to have staff highly trained in SQL and SSIS. This has enabled multiple teams and users in our agency to be able to create solutions that would've taken us months to create before.

Pro: is the ability to quickly, and with little technical knowledge, start an interface in/out of any system. I can't stress enough that it is easy to setup, use, and create as many integration tasks as you need. Customer Service is kind and helping if you have an issue. Please look through their videos if you can't seem to complete your task.

Con: Nothing too complicated please. A multiple step process in one work/data flow just can't be done. The amount of tiny pieces I need to create to acheive a more complex task is infuriating. It's almost exponential the amount of objects/workflows/dataflows needed for each workflow step that can't be cached into memory. And as for debugging, if you are doing massive bulk movements there's no way to preview your data before hand unless you know exactly which row it will be in in the `preview data` view. There is no filtering or sorting on the sample data.

We use the software for ETL and it is fairly reliable to run with minimal issues.

Integrating clients data from their legacy systems.

Centerprise definitely makes new client integrations easy. With the ability to create workflows my team and I can bring in new clients quickly and efficiently. Centerprise takes all the hard work of writing SQL and puts it into an easy to use gui interface. Only thing I wish was easier was to have the ability to add a computed column for row number with out having to do it in multiple steps or within a sql statement.

We have been using Centerprise for 3 years now, and it is used throughout our integration department for daily and historical imports and exports.
Pros:
- extremely easy to use. We have handed off import mapping to non-technical people without issue
- thought out well. The product has a variety of useful and important features, and has bee able to handle most everything we have thrown at it.
- flexible and extensible. We have created our own C# functions which we have been able to integrate into the product. We are also using the API to programmatically start and monitor jobs.
- Great support. The team at Astera responds quickly to our questions and is prompt in addressing issues.

Cons:
- Some 'growing pains.' The product is young, and is sometimes releases have issues which means we must wait for a bug-fix release. this has been improving recently.
- some current issues with handling real-time API imports.

Other:
not an ESB solution (which is not a knock on the product, as it is not billed as one) Does a great job with batch processing. Was not designed or sold as a real-time data integration solution. So this isn't really a 'con' as long as you don't purchase it for that.

This has been a great product for simplifying the maze of thousands of different imports we must handle on a daily basis.

Overall from the sales, through implementation, through use, the entire process has been very smoothe!

Centerprise makes data transformation easy with it's well equipped toolbox and easy customization.

Pros: Great out of the box functionality, ability to customize using self-coded libraries, multiple out of the box transformations provided.
Cons: We are on version 5 and it is somewhat intuitive, but requires some trial and error if you do not get the formal training; however, the customer technical and account support are both great and the online videos and documentation are extensive.

Centerprise was chosen for our DW project after researching several other tools in the ETL space. It is very flexible and easy to use, and allows for previewing of data within transforms, which is a useful feature. Reconfiguring dataflows and any complex logic contained within them is a snap. I have used SSIS for ETL work in the past and found it to be error-prone and a bit tempermental in its management of metadata, which tends to disappear with the slightest editing or adjustment causing much rework and frustration. Centerprise does not cause or suffer with such headaches. The various components of Centerprise have a clean, crisp interface that makes using them straightforward. The diffferent components have help videos and text available, but I wish there were more plentiful and robust examples that would show how to perform common ETL tasks in real world scenarios, such as loading dimension and fact tables from source data where many SCD Type 2 changes have taken place. On the whole Centerprise is an excellent product; I believe it will enable us to achieve our data warehousing goals quickly and efficiently.

Centerprise has its good parts and its bad parts. It handles basic, simple ETL quite well. The amount of features and abilities cover a wide range of tasks. Some of the features, however, are immature and feel like they were added before they were ready.

Customer service response time is very quick, and they are eager to solve issues as they arise.

The UI looks nice and it rather intuitive, though it also lacks polish. Many things don't work as one might expect - for instance; in some places one can use CTRL+ C to copy highlighted content, while in other places one must right click the content and select "copy" from the context menu - and still other places, one may highlight content, but not copy it at all. Scrolling, panning and re-draw also have room for improvement.

Overall, it does what we need it to do, even if we have to create some work-a-rounds for the few shortcomings.

I've been using Centerprise for a few months and found it to be one of the most comprehensive and robust data integration tool in the market. It provides an endless number of great features to address any data transformation needs. It also provides a wide range of data connections for data source/target. During a demo we witnessed how data from a report can be manipulated and transformed to get it into a simple flat file. Ceterprise does take a lot of practice and time to learn, but once well acquainted with it, the work goes fast, smooth and more efficient. Data Integration with Salesforce are still a fuzzy area for me, but the little I used seemed okay. Customer support is great. Cases are usually review within a couple of hours of submitting a case online and resolved within that time or within the same day.

Within the first two weeks we were able to use centerprise in four different conversion processes and saved around 10 manhours. That means in 10 days we were able to perform 11 days worth of work.

Our biggest problem is that work gets in the way of us exploring even more ways of us benefiting from using Centerprise.

One area that is a con is the file definitions for Cobol structures that utilizes Trailing Separate Signs does not work via the Copybook. Customer service has confirmed this is a bug. The last reported was bug was corrected within two weeks of us reporting it.

The product is extremely flexible for many ETL situations. It is an easy product to learn and the user interface provides excellent visibility at all stages of the ETL. The Centerprise is still maturing since the quality assurance has at times been spotty, but Astera does provide immediate assistance / solution when an issue is discovered. Overall the product is an great value for the functionality, ease of use and customer support.

Were were looking for a product to help us gather data from 50 entities on a variety of platforms, and to provide them with the tools necessary to send the data. Centerprise has enabled us to successfully synchronize the data on an automated scheduled basis. The beauty of Centerprise is its' flexibility in being able to standardized the data, and handle the entire process from collection, through cleaning and updating, to publishing.

Centerprise Data Integrator is overall a very useful tool for data integration from legacy systems to the new.
Pros:
Lightweight
Easy to Use
Vast functionality to transform data
Logical work flows are re-usable and saves time
Flexible Expressions are very useful to logically transform data
Quick Support

Cons:
Some defects
Can't put notes in work-flow for instructions when someone else tries to use it

It works great as a stand-alone desktop tool to quickly transform or check your data. There are occasions where there are steps that did not take place or only took place partially, ie. 23 records are loaded when there should be 40 records. Although it can easily be resolved by rerunning the Astera package, but one has to be extra careful of this.

Centerprise has been the essential ETL tool for the past 5 years within our data mapping and conversion teams. It has allowed the MIS function to be centered back on the user in a controlled manner without a deep technical aptitude. The interfaces are easy to use and the product remains effective for our data needs with up to date features.

Speaking from a Procurement specialist standpoint, the process of purchasing and obtaining updates for such product has been nothing but positive.

Working with Munira Lalani on our account has been successful and very helpful.

I was very impressed at the east at which I've been able to connect Salesforce to our Data Warehouse along with multiple other database sources!

This is a great tool. The flexibility it offers is amazing, and the customer service whenever I've had an issue has been exemplary.

Centerprise Data Integrator is easy to learn and easy to use. It allows me to move data from one database to another with the click of a button.