Here’s a summary of the main differences between Precision Bridge and most ETL tools.
1. Security: Precision Bridge provides a direct connection between the source and target platforms while most ETL tools require a two-step process to extract the data and then re-load. This means with PB, that data can be passed securely encrypted from source to target without the need for any intermediate storage.
2. Data Transformation: When migrating application data from one vendor platform to another, the data models are very different on source and target. This means that some transformation logic is required to deliver the data in the correct format. This logic is self-contained within PB and extremely powerful supporting assignment mappings, value match mappings, reference mappings, lookup mappings supported by conditional tests to control the handling of no-match/multi-match and other conditions.
With most ETL tools the transformation logic needs to be built into the extraction or loading scripts either through advanced configuration or low-level development. For example development of ServiceNow scripts in transform maps to perform the transformation.
3. Data Integrity: When migrating data from one platform to another, relationships between records such as assigned-to on incidents needs to be preserved. In PB this is easily done using a reference mapping or lookup on the target platform referenced table to ensure that the correct sys-id is set. In most ETL tools, this requires additional development/scripting to retrieve the correct values and maintain data integrity.
4. Re-usability: In PB, every project you create with all the required transformation logic is stored as xml and is fully re-useable in the sense that it can be pointed to a different source or target platform and re-run without the need for any additional development. For most ETL tools, most of the transformation work has to be re-done or manually transferred to the new environment before it can be used.
5. Scheduling and Syncing: PB includes powerful scheduling and data-sync logic to allow projects to be run at a pre-defined date/time or at a scheduled frequency to ensure that the source and target platforms are kept in sync. Most ETL tools do not have this scheduling capability and need to be manually triggered.
6. Attachments: PB has advanced pre-built logic to handle the migration of attachments from one platform to another without the need for any additional development. The user simply selects a checkbox option for the table that they wish to include attachment migration. Most ETL tools do not support attachment migration and these will need to be handled as a purely manual extract/load or requires specialist development to support.
7. Comments and Work Notes: PB has advanced pre-built logic to migrate comments and work notes to the corresponding records on the target platform while maintaining the original formatting, usernames and time-stamps. Most ETL tools will not support this and will require additional development/scripting to ensure that these are loaded in the correct format.
8. Re-run Option: PB supports the option to re-execute migrations just for failed records so that the full set of records do not need to be re-migrated. For most ETL tools this option requires additional development to support.
9. Validation: PB includes advanced validation of all data mappings before the migration is executed. For most ETL tools there is no such validation option - they rely on the operator to manually check the extraction and delivery mappings are correct.
10. Reporting: PB includes advanced reporting with details on numbers of records created/updated or skipped for each individual table. Reports are available in the UI, as CSV exports or as graphical reports over the web interface. Most ETL tools have very limited reporting capability.
Comments
0 comments
Please sign in to leave a comment.