informatica to ds

king999 · Post by **king999** » Sat Oct 15, 2005 11:43 am

is there any kind of tool that can convert an already existing informatica mappings to datastage jobs. if anyone is working in this kind of environment their information in this topic would be appreciated :D

ArndW · Post by **ArndW** » Sat Oct 15, 2005 12:50 pm

There are quite a few tools who can help in converting from Informatica to DataStage, but they usually need to be paid by the day and need care & feeding as well. Some of them lurk in here, too.

Unfortunately there is little in the way of commonality between the two products; at least nothing that lends itself to automated procedures and programs. The metadata can be re-used, as can some of the job design concepts {particularly when porting to PX} but that's about it.

king999 · Post by **king999** » Sat Oct 15, 2005 1:53 pm

thanx for reply can u name some tools

ArndW · Post by **ArndW** » Sat Oct 15, 2005 4:47 pm

King999,

sorry I wasn't more precise - there are no software tools, just people-power. I was referring to consultants that often post in here in my previous post.

ray.wurlod · Post by **ray.wurlod** » Sat Oct 15, 2005 6:25 pm

I am not aware of any tools, in either direction. One of the reason for the lack is that the two products take a different approach to solving the task of ETL - simplistically, DataStage takes a "top down" approach (draw the picture, then fill in the details), while Informatica is more "bottom up" (design the maps, then put them together).

vmcburney · Post by **vmcburney** » Sun Oct 16, 2005 6:20 pm

Ascential set up a team of developers to convert PeopleSoft EPM customers across from Informatica to DataStage when PeopleSoft changed partners on the embedded ETL engine. I have heard this team had an Informatica to DataStage converter that did up to 90% of the conversion work, with the remainder done manually (and possibly the last 10% taking a lot longer then the first 90%). However this was a DataStage Server job converter. This same team also had to do some PeopleSoft implementations for clients who upgraded to Enterprise Edition. I understand they also have a server job to parallel job converter!

I don't fancy your chances of getting to use these converters unless you are a PeopleSoft customer, but you could always contact Ascential support and see what they can do.

Even if you had the conversion tool you will find two things
- Quite often you will find your job needs a complete redesign given the way parallel jobs work and it is easier to rebuild it using existing documentation and the Informatica job as a guide.
- Your jobs and job control are not inherently maintainable, even if produced by a conversion tool. You still need a DataStage expert who is experienced with job control, error handling, partitioning, custom stages etc.

RAJEEV KATTA · Post by **RAJEEV KATTA** » Mon Oct 24, 2005 1:10 am

Hey King,
Jobs from Informatica to DataStage can be converted using DataStage MIgrator tool(IBM Asc tool).But the jobs would be converted into server jobs.

Cheers,
Rajeev.

vmcburney wrote:Ascential set up a team of developers to convert PeopleSoft EPM customers across from Informatica to DataStage when PeopleSoft changed partners on the embedded ETL engine. I have heard this team had an Informatica to DataStage converter that did up to 90% of the conversion work, with the remainder done manually (and possibly the last 10% taking a lot longer then the first 90%). However this was a DataStage Server job converter. This same team also had to do some PeopleSoft implementations for clients who upgraded to Enterprise Edition. I understand they also have a server job to parallel job converter!

I don't fancy your chances of getting to use these converters unless you are a PeopleSoft customer, but you could always contact Ascential support and see what they can do.

Even if you had the conversion tool you will find two things
- Quite often you will find your job needs a complete redesign given the way parallel jobs work and it is easier to rebuild it using existing documentation and the Informatica job as a guide.
- Your jobs and job control are not inherently maintainable, even if produced by a conversion tool. You still need a DataStage expert who is experienced with job control, error handling, partitioning, custom stages etc.

vmcburney · Post by **vmcburney** » Mon Oct 24, 2005 5:44 pm

If you could get your hands on the unofficial inhouse DataStage Migrator then it would take just a little bit more wheedling to also get the Server job to Parallel job Migrator! By the time you've done that double migration I wonder what quality jobs you have left...

lstsaur · Post by **lstsaur** » Mon Oct 24, 2005 6:20 pm

Hi,
Ascential does not have any tool that can convert server jobs to parallel jobs. We spent so much money on the hardware and the EE software for our PeopleSoft EPM project, but we found out that all delivered jobs for PeopleSoft EPM are server jobs and the fastest way to convert them is to hire 15 more PX developers. Lesson learned.

vmcburney · Post by **vmcburney** » Mon Oct 24, 2005 7:08 pm

Probably be more effective to get two good parallel programmers and only convert those server jobs that need to be converted. 80% of the jobs may actually run slower if converted from server to parallel jobs, or have improment gains that are negligable. Server jobs are perfectly happy to run alongside parallel jobs. And it is likely Ascential will provide a parallel set of EPM loads within the next 1 to 2 years (if Oracle don't scrap the agreement) so you can wait for them to do the work for you.

vmcburney · Post by **vmcburney** » Mon Oct 24, 2005 7:14 pm

I do agree with you about the lack of information on PeopleSoft EPM DataStage version options. At the time it came out most PeopleSoft sales staff didn't know much about DataStage, most Ascential sales staff didn't know much about the PeopleSoft version, or new about server jobs but didn't know about parallel job options. I had to do a lot of digging at the time to find the specifications of the PeopleSoft version and the platform options.

lstsaur · Post by **lstsaur** » Mon Oct 24, 2005 11:52 pm

Well, now is IBM's sales staff trying to figure out what's server job, parallel job, PeopleSoft EPM version.... I also heard that Oracle is looking into its OWB to replace the PeopleSoft EPM DataStage. It's always small fish gets swallowed.

vmcburney · Post by **vmcburney** » Tue Oct 25, 2005 2:24 am

Oracle is in an interesting position. They bought these RDBMS independent products such as PeopleSoft but if they want to embed OWB into them they are going to have to make them Oracle dependent, which pisses off a lot of existing customers.