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Plans

Plans​

The forthcoming major project I'm actively conceptualizing revolves around the development of an ETL to ELT transpiler.

This initiative addresses several critical shortcomings associated with logical constructs developed within IBM Datastage ETL processes, which employ graphical programming.

These issues are as follows:

  • Network Overhead - The data transfer between the database and ETL processes in this setup places a significant burden on the network infrastructure.

  • Performance Differential - IBM Datastage (ETL) pales in comparison to the processing power offered by Oracle Exadata (ELT), resulting in suboptimal performance.

  • Challenges of Visual Programming - Working within a visual programming environment, especially with IBM Datastage tools, significantly complicates the development and maintenance processes due to the following limitations:

    • Inadequate Search Capabilities - The ability to search for specific components or code segments is severely limited.

    • Complex Task Decomposition - Breaking down complex tasks into manageable parts becomes exceedingly difficult.

    • Limited Debugging - Step-by-step debugging is practically impossible, hindering the identification of errors.

    • Error Analysis - There are no means to intercept and analyze errors occurring within individual blocks.

    • Code Reusability - The potential for reusing code is virtually non-existent.

    • Fragmented Execution - Running code in separate sections, especially for incident analysis, is unfeasible.

    • Lack of Analytical Tools - The absence of robust tools for analyzing execution plans severely hampers incident analysis.

    • Vendor Lock-In - Most notably, this approach entails a high level of dependence on the service provider, resulting in exorbitant costs when transitioning ETL logic to a different ETL engine.

Developing a transpiler that can seamlessly convert IBM Datastage constructs into SQL represents an immensely complex endeavor.

However, this innovation will ultimately facilitate the transition of all ETL processes to an ELT paradigm.

In doing so, it will effectively eliminate the array of drawbacks outlined above, ensuring a more efficient, flexible, and cost-effective data integration and transformation process.