Legacy ETL solutions are a procedural programming exercise. An ETL process starts with a source query pulling data, then through some workflow steps the data transformations are executed with data finally applied at the destination. Intelligent Integration’s Json document framework fundamentally changes the traditional paradigm from procedural programming to declarative.
In declarative programming the goal is to declare “what” should be done vs “how” it should be done. More precisely, the “what” and the “how” is seperated. In it’s application of Intelligent Integration’s Declarative ETL, the “how” is a mixture computer code and configuration data. The “what” is a data dictionary of metadata. When data is inputted, the data dictionary is saying what should be done with the data.
Another way to look at this is that Intelligent Integration has separated metadata from computer code. It has also separated configuration from implementation. So after the initial installation and configuration of the Intelligent Integration server, the ETL designer can focus on implementing only business requirements because ETL technical requirements have already been configured will be automatically applied.
Legacy ETL solutions uses building blocks of code. Their IDEs have a toolbar of icons that are dropped into a workflow designer. Each code block is designed to solve a very discrete ETL task. Intelligent Integration code is designed to implement the end results of the entire data model.
Intelligent Integration’s declarative approach is far more efficient at change management. First thing is most “change” is not a code change, it is just metadata. Need to change mappings or schema? No coding required. When there is a need for an actual code change, Intelligent Integration is still more efficient. The declarative framework has the same advantage of object oriented programming of a write once.