ETL and DW

• ETL Tools
  
• Data Integration
  
• Data Warehousing
  
• ->Open Source ETL
  
• ->ETL Jobs
  
• ->Data Warehouse Jobs
  

ETL process

• Extraction
  
• Extraction sources
  
• Data transformation
  
• ->Data cleansing
  
• ->Data profiling
  
• Loading
  
• ->Dimensions
  
• ->Facts
  

Open source ETL Tools

Over the past few years, a couple of open-source software providers has emerged on the business intelligence (BI) market. Open source ETL tools are a good solution for companies which are looking to reduce costs either by using open source software only or complementing existing infrastructure with such tools. Over ten vendors provide with projects that can be classed as Open Source BI (OSBI). Usually these are open source projects created by a small community with no commercial interest.
Alternatively, some vendors supply free version of their commercial software with a number of accessible functions significantly reduced. Most of the open source platforms , tools and source codes are gratuitously available at SorceForge (http://sourceforge.net).

Pentaho

Pentaho (Orlando, USA) is a competitive open source platform compared to commercial software offered by companies such as Business Objects, Cognos, and Oracle.

Pentaho offers a basic reporting solution but also a more advanced Pentaho BI (including OLAP analysis, dashboards and data mining). To benefit from additional BI functions, a Gold or Platinum subscription can be purchased. The subscription also enables access to extended service levels that are not available for open source software.
The Pentaho BI platform runs on Windows, Linux and Mac OS, and is based on server-side Java, Ajax, and Eclipse environment.

Jasper Soft

Jasper Soft (San Francisco, USA) is another leading company on open source BI market. The company offers a family of products including report designer, OLAP analysis server, and open source ETL tool based on Talend's open source ETL engine. Jasper tightly cooperates with Sun Microsystems, MySQL, Novell, Red Hat and Unisys. It also provides Jasper4Solutions that can be considered as a competition for salesforce.com, SugarCRM and Oracle eBusiness Suite.

Actuate Corporation

Actuate Corporation (San Mateo, USA) is a commercial software vendor that started its first open source ETL project in 2004. The corporation is also a founder and a member of Eclipse Foundation. Actuate provides open source Business Intelligence and Reporting Tool (BIRT). It also supports part of its commercial reporting tools free of charge. For more advanced users an annual subscription supporting BIRT is available but it offers only limited capabilities in comparison to Actuate platform (the company's latest commercial product).
Actuate is also a sponsor and founder of BIRT Exchange that works as a community Web site offering support and information on BIRT products. Actuate BIRT has been appreciated by IBM and incorporated into their Rational product family.

SpagoBI

SpagoBI is a BI platform popular in Europe and owned by Engineering Ingegneria Informatica (EII) based in Italy. SpagoBI offers an alternative approach of their consultants building and implementing custom solutions for their key customers. EII has released a single version of SpagoBI, which is available on OW2 Consortium Web site (www.ow2.org) since 2004 for public use.
SpagoBI promotes an integration approach and "Free and Open Source Software" that enables deployment at enterprise level without having to purchase a commercial version and supplies with even more advanced tools free of charge.

Other vendors and platforms

• Jedox (Germany) offers free Palo OLAP analytic engine
• SQLPower Group (Canada) offers its previously commercial tool, which, however, haven't been developed recently
• LogiXML (Virginia, USA) part of its reporting tool is free and may be used for smaller scale analyses