that INFA actually gain 'points' in the sales cycle by having an 'open' repository on a relational database is simply an indication of the ignorance of the evaluators giving it points.
I've used INFA extensively, and you can't read/understand and produce reasonable reports/analysis out of the INFA repository without investing significant time learning that repository. And yes, INFA has a product that sits over the top and will produce these reports for you, just like MetaStage does. Only difference is tha the MetaStage database 'almost decipherable by a mere mortal'.
The reasons are the same...the information required to store what is happening in a 'mapping' (infa equivalent of a Job) is just as complicated as DataStage, and the same fieldname shows up in each link it is used on.
The only way we were able to generate useful reports out of the metastage hub is to have a naming standard for the tarnsformer that does the 'source to target mapping' and we could extract infomration about that particular transformer in each job......
vmcburney wrote:You can also twiddle your thumbs for twelve months because by the end of 2005 the Ascential suite will be on a database independent repository with support for SQL Server, Oracle or DB2. I think Ascential have been taking flack for years from Informatica in vendor comparisons because Informatica has an open repository and DataStage doesn't.