Categorising Ab Initio and labelling strength and weakness based on the followin

g criteria. I am giving each section points from 1 to 10(10 being best) based on
my own experience and some reference from web. 1.Cost to purchase(4)
2.Total Cost of Ownership(4)
3.Platform (OS and DBMS)(8)
4.Ease of use (wizards, drag & drop, etc)(8)
5. Learning curve(6)
6. Performance(9)
7. Available expertise(7)
8.Ab Initio Support and Other Resources(5) Cost of Purchase Comparing it with ot
her major ETL tools like Informatica with similar functionalities, the pricing d
ifference will be clearly evident It is one of the costliest ETL tool in the mar
ket, with cost ranging from 500k to 5M, it depends upon the number of servers Ab
Initio is installed, number of developer license and type of license, and batch
flow is comparatively cheaper than continuous flow. Total Cost of Ownership a)A
nnual maintenance charges The cost of ownership comes in 3 parts b)Cost of emplo
ying/training Ab initio resources c) Development cost Annual Maintenance charges
It is generally the percentage of initial cost and it is significant due to hig
h initial cost. This number may differ based on the NDA and initial investment.
A rough 10% maintenance charges is significant outflow. Development cost covered
under training and resources Available Expertise/Ab Initio Resources (training/
employing) It is high end tool, so the developer community is not massive like m
any open source application, so employing these resources come with premium pric
e. - Additionally Ab Initio is such a close community, so if you are ETL develop
er and want to explore/learn Ab Initio generally you will hit a wall and as I re
call really there are 2 options 1.Work for an Organisation who own Ab initio 2.T
here are only handful of organisation who train in Ab Initio, so pay a premium t
o join the club Platform Like most of other ETL tools, it can work in various pl
atforms.
On Database front, it can connect to all the major databases available in the ma
rket. So there is
nothing to choose between this tool with respect to others. It allows connection
to DB either by
ODBC client or native mode, I believe some of other ETL tools may not have nativ
e mode supported
Ease of use Creating custom based components and re-using those is one feature,
I really liked in Ab Initio Being GUI based it is easy to use, simple component
s, drag and drop and various
indicators if connections are not completely made. In comparison to other tools,
there is nothing
much to chose in that end.
There are certain set of components which are difficult to use and may require b
it of scripting experience, but it is okay Learning Curve Part of learning curve
is covered in next section Learning curve is quick to start with; the difficult
components can take some time.
Ab Initio has designed certain components very cleverly, it takes bit of experie
nce to utilize those
optimally and take bit of time. I guess learning time of about 15 man days for a
programmer with
about 2-3 years experience will give enough fluency in designing application
Ab Initio Support and other resources Covering both topics in one go Ab Initio i
s treating their application like a fort/sacred book, with little information an
d literature available on the market, so as a consequence, there is not enough i
nformation material on web. 1.Not enough resources on web
2.Hit productivity of team, when struck with a technical/design issue
3.Unavailability of training material hurt training new employees
Just like any application/scripting language, there is potential of not using th
e application optimally, I
really believe lack of proper training and open discussion has hit Ab Initio dev
elopers really hard,
where they missing and still groping in dark having following set of problems
1.No Access or standard set of best practices. Organisation tend to have their o
wn best practices if any and under tough external review generally these will fa
ll much short of best 2.MissingInput from other communities having parallel func
tionalities and smaller developer pool restricts better ideas/inputs Though Ab I
nitio provides training for users (costumers), but it does not cover each and ev
ery aspect of Ab Initio and advanced training comes with a cost, Ab Initio provi
de support to their customers, it is of decent quality, but it takes generally l
ong turnaround time Performance I left this topic at end, as this is the reason
Ab Initio is used
For massive data processing, where time is of essence and performance and throug
h put is critical, Ab Initio stands head and shoulder above others. 1. Massively
parallel Architecture a.Available data can be split and processed in parallel g
iving it huge processing advantage. b.Theoretically, it is possible to design a
system using Ab Initio architect where any
additional processing power can be achieved by adding additional resources in
parallel, thus allowing any scale-up easy and possible
2. Innovative component a.Ab Initio components like compressed indexed files and
similar gives Ab initio an edge when dealing with huge dataset. Though this con
cept is not unheard of, in past, but Ab Initio implemented it successfully. b.So
me new scripting features known as PDL (Program definition Language) in Ab
Initio allows flexibility, which is quite well received by Ab Initio developers
and not
easily available in other ETL tools.
c.Personal perception:Ab Initio has put some effort in component design taking c
are of small issues like memory management/memory foot print. Though these are n
ot critical essentially, but in time critical system, these provide an edge