Data Extraction, Transformation, And Loading For AllData Extraction, Transformation, And Loading For All

Embarcadero Technologies Inc. is expanding beyond its roots as a vendor of database-administration tools by offering data extraction, transformation, and loading software. Its DT/Studio product targets small and midsize businesses for which other ETL products are too complex and expensive.

ETL software pulls data out of one source, massages it into a common format, and puts it into another data source. It's used for data integration, application integration, and data warehousing applications. DT/Studio will compete against ETL products from vendors such as Ascential Software Corp. and Informatica Corp., although Gartner estimates that 80% of all ETL software in use is custom-developed. Annual revenue for packaged ETL tools last year was $410 million, with sales expected to grow 5% to 7% this year and reach nearly $600 million in 2005.

Cerqa, a supply-chain management services company in Austin, Texas, installed DT/Studio in late December to transform data sent by the company's clients into a standard format. Such transformations required lots of development work in the past. "It was taking a lot of IT resources to do that," IT director Mike Tiller says. DT/Studio was installed in one day, quicker than more complex ETL tools, he says.

"DT/Studio is an interesting entrant into the market due to the fact that its price point is about 10% to 20% of leading ETL products," Gartner analyst Ted Friedman says. "With its relatively large installed base of DBA productivity tools, it will be interesting to see how big a dent Embarcadero can make in the prospect base of 'best-of-breed' ETL vendors."

DT/Studio uses a Java-based engine and includes Embarcadero's ER/Studio data-modeling tool for mapping data sources. It also includes prebuilt data transformation templates. DT/Studio lets developers build Java and XML functions for a range of databases, including IBM DB2 Universal Database, Microsoft SQL Server 2000, Oracle, Sybase, and nonrelational flat-file databases. It's available now; pricing starts at $35,000.