Updated April 27, 2023
Difference Between Talend vs Informatica PowerCenter
Several emerging Data Integration technologies allow data from different sources to communicate with each other. Extract-Transform-Load (ETL) is a type of data integration where data is read from the source, transformed using predefined logic, and then loaded into the target in some other form. ETL tools provide connectors to implement data transformations quickly and consistently across various data sources. Connectors for filtering, sorting, joining, merging, aggregation, and other operations are available and ready to use in these ETL tools. Informatica PowerCenter and Talend are among the most popular ETL tools which run on-premises. Both Talend and Informatica PowerCenter provides us with a user-friendly Graphical User Interface, and both move data from source to target, but their implementations are different.
So let us study Talend and Informatica PowerCenter in detail in this post.
Head to Head Comparision Between Talend vs Informatica PowerCenter (Infographics)
Below are the Top 12 Comparision between Talend vs Informatica PowerCenter:
Key Differences Between Talend vs Informatica PowerCenter
Let’s have a detailed overview of PowerCenter concepts and their Talend equivalents:
- Repository/ Project Repository: The Repository in PowerCenter or the Project Repository in Talend is the storage location containing data related to all the technical items you can use to describe business models or design Jobs/workflow. A repository stores metadata objects such as jobs, contexts, database connections, etc.
- Folder: Present in both the tools to organize jobs with different categories/projects. Talend allows subfolders inside folders, whereas Informatica does not support subfolders.
- Workflow/ Job: A workflow in Informatica or a Talend job is a graphical design of one or more components connected together. It allows you to set up and run data flow.
- Transformation/ Components: Transformations in Informatica or Components in Talend provide specified functionality that implements the data flow. We use pre-configured connectors to perform data integration operations.
- Source & Target Definitions & Connections/ Repository metadata: Source & Target Definitions & Connections in PowerCenter or the Repository metadata in Talend is used to store schema definitions.
- PowerCenter workspace/ Design Area: PowerCenter workspace in Informatica or Design Area in Talend is used to design Jobs/Process flow.
- Palette/ Transformation toolbar: The palette in Informatica or the Transformation toolbar in Talend is a library of all components. Components are grouped in families according to their usage and displayed in the palette.
- Worklet or Reusable Session/ Joblet: These are the reusable set of tasks.
Comparison Table Between Talend vs Informatica PowerCenter
Below is the comparison Between Talend vs Informatica PowerCenter:
| Basis of Comparison | Talend | Informatica |
| Commercial or Open source | Talend provides multiple solutions for data integration, both open-source and commercial editions. | Informatica provides only commercial data integration. |
| History | It started around October 2006. | Founded in 1993. |
| Pricing | Open source edition is available free of cost. | Charges are applicable for single/ multiuser licenses. |
| Popularity | Most popular open-source ETL tool. | Most mature ETL product in the market. |
| Platform | Talend generates native Java code, which allows you to run it on any platform which supports Java. | Informatica generates metadata stored in the RDBMS repository; it causes no code. |
| Custom codes | Custom code can be written efficiently. | Integrating custom code using Java transformation is not so efficient. |
| Learning | Requires Java knowledge. | Easy to learn and use the tool with limited knowledge. Even business users can understand the mapping and logic applied. |
| Deployment | Ease of deployment. | Deployment automation needs to be improved. |
| Re-usability | Reusable components can be generated. | Transformations are reusable. |
| Scheduling | Open source edition does not support job scheduling, but the commercial does with TAC (Talend Administration Console). | It is possible to schedule jobs using the server manager. |
| Parallelism | Talend supports parallelism with commercial editions but not with open source. | Supports parallelism; multiple mapping sessions can be executed on the same server. |
| Backup & Recovery | No such feature in open source. | A repository manager can be used for backup and recovery. |
Major Strengths and Weaknesses of Talend vs Informatica PowerCenter
Talend
- The best thing about Talend is the ease of use/debugging and deployment.
- Behind the scenes, it uses Java coding, so whatever you do in the interface can be easily visible under the code.
- Packaging and deployment of code are easy, too, in any environment (Windows or Mac or Linux) with any version of Java compatibility.
- The Talend Administration Console (TAC) is a great place to schedule and monitor your jobs.
- Since it is open source, you can download it from the Talend website and explore it anytime.
- Talend needs JVM to run its code. In the cloud world, people want their Web solutions to have DB, applications, and ETL on the same server to avoid network latency and traffic. This makes Talend’s future bright.
Strengths:
- Cost-effective.
- Easy to customize.
- Lots of built-in adapters are readily available.
- Ease of deployment.
- It provides data quality features and allows us to write customized queries.
Weaknesses:
- The scheduling feature is not available with the open-source edition.
- The backup and recovery feature is not available.
Informatica
- It is the most widely used tool to connect and fetch data from heterogeneous sources.
- Available in three different editions: Standard, Advanced, and Premium.
- It is the Data Integration Product leader in Gartner Magic Quadrant Listing.
- Provides highly reliable, bug-free solutions.
- Dynamic Partitioning can be done using Informatica.
Strengths:
- Highly efficient and reliable tool.
- Easily expandable.
- Stable.
- Supports most of the industry-standard data types.
- Efficient in handling complex lookup transformations.
- Supports multiuser client-server development interface.
- Easy to use and learn.
Weaknesses:
- It does not have the feature of Data Quality; it needs to be handled programmatically.
- Does not have any web integration feature.
- PowerCenter does not generate code; all the mappings developed are in the form of a GUI Interface.
Conclusion
Taking into account all the features of Talend and Informatica PowerCenter, we can say that both tools allow the same task of transformation and data integration. However, Informatica is highly specialized in ETL and Data integration. It’s the market leader in the ETL domain. But, if you want to go for open source and are familiar with Java, then go for Talend. It is more affordable than Informatica regarding cost, training, and resource allocation. Also, it is up to date on Big Data Technologies like Spark, Hive, AWS, etc.
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