Difference Between Talend and Informatica PowerCenter
There are several emerging Data Integration technologies which 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 easily and consistently across various data sources. Connectors for filtering, sorting, joining, merging, aggregation, and other operations are available ready to use in these ETL tools. Informatica PowerCenter and Talend are among most popular ETL tools which run on-premises.
Both Talend and Informatica PowerCenter provides us a user-friendly Graphical User Interface and both move data from source to target but, their implementations are different.
So let us study both Talend and Informatica PowerCenter in detail in this post.
Head To Head Comparision Between Talend and Informatica PowerCenter (Infographics)
Below is the Top 12 Comparision between Talend Vs Informatica PowerCenter
Key Differences Between Talend and Informatica
Let’s have a detailed overview of PowerCenter concepts and their Talend equivalents
1.Repository/ Project Repository:
The Repository in PowerCenter or the Project Repository in Talend is the storage location that contains data related to all the technical items that you can use either to describe business models or to design Jobs/workflow. Metadata objects like Jobs, Contexts, and Database Connections, etc are stored in a repository.
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2.Folder:
Present in both the tools to organize jobs with different categories/projects. Talend allows subfolders inside folders whereas Informatica does not support subfolders.
3.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.
4.Transformation/ Components:
Transformations in Informatica or Components in Talend provide specified functionality that implements the data flow. These are pre-configured connectors used to perform data integration operation.
5.Source & Target Definitions & Connections/ Repository metadata:
Source & Target Definitions & Connections in PowerCenter or the Repository metadata in Talend is used to store schema definitions.
6.PowerCenter workspace/ Design Area:
PowerCenter workspace in Informatica or Design Area in Talend is used to design Jobs/Process flow.
7.Palette/ Transformation toolbar:
Palette in Informatica or Transformation toolbar in Talend is a library of all components. Components are grouped in families according to their usage and displayed in the palette.
8.Worklet or Reusable Session/ Joblet:
These are the reusable set of tasks.
Comparison Table between Talend Vs Informatica PowerCenter
Below are the comparison :
| 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 | Started around October 2006 | Founded in 1993 |
| Pricing | Open source edition is available free of cost | Charges applicable for single/ multiuser license |
| 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 that is stored in RDBMS repository; it does not generate any 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 commercial does with TAC (Talend Administration Console) | It is possible to schedule jobs using server manager |
| Parallelism | Talend supports parallelism with commercial edition, 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 | Backup and recovery can be done with a repository manager. |
Major Strengths and Weaknesses of Talend Vs Informatica PowerCenter
Talend
- The best thing about Talend is the ease of use/debug and ease of 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 start exploring it anytime.
- Talend just 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 easily available
- Ease of deployment
- Provides data quality features and allows us to write customized queries
Weaknesses
- Scheduling feature is not available with open source edition
- Backup and recovery feature is not available
Informatica
- It is the most widely used tool with the capability 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 to handle complex lookup transformations
- Supports multiuser client-server development interface
- Easy to use and learn
Weaknesses
- 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 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 ETL domain. But, if you want to go for open source and you are familiar with Java then go for Talend. It is more affordable than Informatica in terms of cost, training and resource allocation. Also, it is up to date on Big Data Technologies like Spark, Hive, AWS, etc.
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