A P P L I C A T I O N S

A W h i t e P A P e r S e r i e S
eAi And etL technoLogy hAve StrengthS
And WeAkneSSeS ALike. there Are
cLeAr boundArieS Around the tyPeS
of APPLicAtion integrAtion ProjectS
moSt APProPriAte for eAch technoLogy.
EAI vs. ETL: Drawing Boundaries for Data Integration
Business enterprises invest millions of dollars to implement
and deliver Data Warehousing and Business Intelligence (BI) initiatives
that rely on consistent, accurate and reliable data. IT organizations in these enterprises
must ensure that proper integration techniques are selected to address the data needs of the organization.
Positioning a common enterprise-wide integration strategy with EAI is essential to establish a clear-
cut partnership between business needs and IT solutions. Data integration, a function of ETL, is a
prominent need as mediocre data at the foundation of any BI initiative fails to provide an accurate picture
of the business. Thus the vital question: EAI or ETL?
In this paper, we'll explore this question, comparing ETL against the data integration element of EAI.
introduction
cALL for eAi
cALL for etL
WhAt iS eAi?
WhAt iS etL?
comPAring eAi And etL
diStinctive fActorS
eAi vS. etL: A deciSion mAking guide
drAWing boundArieS: eAi vS. etL
the bottom Line
2 0 0 7 S y nt e l , i nc.
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eAi vs. etl: Drawing Boundaries for Data integration
1.
cAll for eAi
Most business activities involve multiple applica-
tions and information sources; incompatibilities
between these systems can cause delays and errors
that prevent organization from achieving real-time
business. The key to increasing operational effi-
ciency and maximizing the individual value of these
systems is ensuring that they can communicate and
interact in real time.
Some of the challenges facing modern
organizations are:
Giving the business complete, transparent
access to information
Enabling seamless movement of information
from one application to another
EAI, as a discipline, aims to alleviate many of these
problems as well as create new paradigms for truly
lean proactive organizations.

2.
cAll for etl
ETL (Extract, Transform and Load) is the tech-
nology with the focus for data integration, whether
in batch or real time for data stores/data ware-
houses. It synchronizes data between diverse appli-
cations and involves a lot more data manipulation
than simply moving data from point A to B. There
is reconciliation, cross matching, de-duping, cleans-
ing - all data-intensive tasks that lay the foundation
for facilitating analysis and reporting.
These systems are no longer stand-alone and sepa-
rate from operational processingthey are inte-
grated with overall business processes.
ETL is no longer nice to have, but is essential to
success.
EAI, as a discipline, aims to create
lean, proactive organizations.
EAI LEvELS
DATA-LEvEL EAI
the data-level eAi technique
implements information
exchange among multiple
application data stores using
traditional extract, transform,
and load (etL) techniques
that are commonplace in
data warehouse deploy-
ments.
MESSAgE-LEvEL EAI
message-level eAi manages
message exchange among
multiple applications using
reliable queuing systems.
PrOCESS-LEvEL EAI
Process-level eAi technique
goes beyond message-level
eAi by overlaying a work-
flow management capability
on top of message delivery
capability.
Integration Technologies Working in Concert
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2EPORT0ORTAL
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2EPORT
$ASHBOARD
Figure 1. Example of integration
technologies working together.
3.
whAt iS eAi?
Enteprise Application Integration is the process of
aligning a businesss strategic vision with its infor-
mation technology
Enterprise Application Integration (EAI) solu-
tions enable the automation of end-to-end business
processes by coordinating sequences of tasks and
resources (both systems and people) that perform
them. EAI solutions support sophisticated excep-
tion management and the dynamic modification of
processes even when processes are underway.
EAI involves developing a unified view of an
enterprises business and its applications, seeing
how existing applications fit into the new view, and
then devising ways to efficiently reuse what already
exists while adding new applications and data.
EAI provides packaged integration solutions
to help the enterprise develop a consistent
approach to integration for all applications.
4.
whAt iS etl?
Extract, Transform and Load (ETL) provides data consolidation
for building permanent databases used for analytics or reports,
data federation for creating virtual dashboards or reports, and data
propagation for the transfer of data between applications.
These three database functions are combined into one tool to pull
data out of source databases and place it into target databases.
ETL is used to migrate data from one or more databases to others,
to form data repositories, data marts, data warehouses and also to
convert databases from one format or type to another.
Extract - the process of reading data from source systems.
Data can be extracted in schedule-driven pull mode or event
driven push mode. Pull mode operation supports data consol-
idation and is typically done in batch. Push mode operation is
one online by propagating data changes to target data stores.
Transform - the process of converting the extracted data from
its existing form into the format it needs to be in so that it
can be placed into other systems or databases. Transformation
occurs by using rules or lookup tables or by combining the
data with other data.
Load - the process of creation and execution of workflows to

write data into the target systems. Data loading may cause
a complete refresh of a target data store or may be done by
updating the target destination. Interfaces here include de
facto standards like ODBC, JBDC, JMS, or application inter-
faces. Loads could be parallel, synchronized or sequenced;
e.g., ETL tool support parallel execution which dramatically
reduces response time for data-intensive operations on data
warehouses/data stores.
"USINESSTO"USINESS&LOW
Secure, lnternet-based llow ol data between businesses
0ROCESS&LOW
Process/workllow modeling, alarms and alerts, decision matrices.
)NFORMATION&LOW
Event-based data translormation
Pre-built application adapters (SAP, Oracle Apps, PeopleSolt)
$ATA&LOW
Peal-time change data capture, translorm and llow, publish and subscribe, meta data management
4RANSPORT&LOW
TCP/lP, SNA, MO Series Messaging
Figure 2. The EAI architecture has various layers that reflect an increasing level of matu-
rity in the integration environment with the overall enterprise application framework.
EAI is the process of aligning a business's strategic vision with its
information technology.
Admlnlstratlon
& Operatlons
Servlces
Transport
Servlces
Pun Tlme
Meta Data
Servlces
Extract
Load
Transform
Source Adapters
Target Adapters
Database
Fl|es
Legacy
App|lcatlons
Database
& Fl|es
Meta Data
Peposltory
Meta data
lmport/export
Figure 3. The ETL process
The other services which form an integral part of the ETL
framework are:
Administration and Operation services - these services
ensure effective utilization of resources in the data synchro-
nization environment. They ensure effective administration
through job scheduling and tracking, metadata management,
error recovery, etc.
Transport services - the process of moving raw or trans-
formed data from a source to a target system.
Metadata services - Metadata is descriptive information
about data and other structures, such as objects, business
rules, and processes that manipulate data. Metadata can be
grouped into two categories:

Technical metadata supports designers, developers, administrators

during development, maintenance, and management of an informa-
tion technology environment. It is the technical glue that links the
tools, applications, and systems that together constitute a solution.
Example of technical metadata: the schema design of a data ware-
house is typically stored in a repository as metadata, which is used
to generate the scripts that build data warehouse tables.
Business metadata, on the other hand, gives a clearer picture of
the services of the enterprise environment to end-users. Examples of
business metadata include: business requirements, timelines, busi-
ness metrics, business process flows, and business terminology.
Metadata authors enter information about the business application
into the metadata repository.
5.
compAring eAi AnD etl

EAI tools are clearly most appropriate for process integration,
which consists of multi-step business process management and
real-time interactive processing when very large numbers of
transactions are involved.
ETL tools do not handle these processes well. ETL tools are not
designed to handle discontinuous workflows, or to scale to mov-
ing very large numbers of small transactional messages.
EAI and ETL are not competing technologies. They each rely
on the concept of a unified view and the definition of a mapping
that allows data from many disparate sources to be projected
onto that view.
There are many situations where they can be used in conjunction
with each other where ETL can act as a service to EAI. One of
the main objectives of EAI is to provide transparent access to the
wide range of applications that exist in an organization. An EAI-
to-ETL interconnection could be built using a Web service or a
message queue to give an ETL product access to this application
data.
Such an interconnection eliminates the need for ETL to develop
point-to-point adapters for synchronizing applications data
sources. EAI is focused on real-time processing, it can conse-
quently act as a real-time event source or target by an ETL appli-
cation.
ETL tools allow developers to define
ETL as Web services. These Web
services can be invoked by EAI
applications. This not only provides
transformational power to the EAI
environment, but also supports code and
metadata reuse.
In plain words, data integration (provid-
ed by ETL) is a sub-set of process inte-
gration (provided by EAI); a common
functionality between ETL and EAI is
data integration from disparate systems.
It is important to note that data integra-
tion using EAI is at a cost software,
hardware, infrastructure, skills, licenses,
heavy footprint.
ETL is no longer "nice-to-have,"
but is essential to success.
AN EXAMPLE OF
EAI/ETL OvErLAP
employers send entitlement
information for employees
and dependents to health-
care insurance payers on a
weekly basis.

this information has records
of all changes to entitlement
information that occurred
during the week.
the incoming data from the
employer is in a proprietary
format and needs to be con-
verted into the healthcare
providers backend main-
frame system format.
Summary records must be
created that list the number
of dependents and children
for each employee. here, eAi
is used for transmitting the
records which have incre-
mental changes and etL is
used to perform format and
content transformations in a
batch mode.
$ATA)NTEGRATION%4,
0ROCESS)NTEGRATION%!)
Data synchronization ETL
Interactive processing (ETL
or EAI)
Multi-step processing EAI
Batch and real-time data
synchronization
Point-to-point continuous
processing
Simple or no workflow
BPM
Multi-step process
Figure 4. EAI/ETL overlap
6.
DiStinctive fActorS
Areas EAI ETL
Definition Technology solution that enables systems to
communicate
Process designed by users to extract, transform, and
load data from one or more sources to a target data
repository
Performance
Optimization
System is aimed at reducing the response time for a
single user request or update
System is aimed at reducing total time to create the
unified historical record
Integration Applications Data
Focus Operational & Strategic Operational
Business Case IT, e-business Better Workflow
Data entry once
Business Intelligence
Decision making
Time Real Time Batch (moving to real time)
Data Transactional-small Historical-enormous
Metadata Limited
Message metadata
Rich
Dimensional metadata
Transformations Format oriented
Code supported
Analytic
Joins
Aggregations

Volume Single transactions

Messages/second (KB)
Days or weeks of data
Records per min (GB)
Targets OLTP API
Code supported
Relational Structures
Native connectivity
Codeless

Extracts Data Using APIs Directly from database

System Admin
Involvement
EAI requires no system administrator involvement.
Once implemented, EAI is a technology solution that
is transparent to end users.
ETL requires extensive system administrator
involvement
7.
eAi vS. etl: A DeciSion mAking guiDe
Syntel has developed a list of questions to help guide your orga-
nization toward the best decision for the situation when decid-
ing between EAI and ETL. This toolkit can be used as an aid
to evaluate a project as process integration or a data integration
project.
Factors for consideration in the decision include:
Costs of run-time processing and development.
Proprietary nature of source or target systems. A situation
where the source system can only be accessed via screen
scrapping because the file layouts and key structures are

part of package and source is not available. In such cases

neither ETL nor EAI will work and a solution might have
to be developed on case to case basis.
The state of data and load-time window available to
migrate data from source to target and vice versa which
needs real-time movement of data.
Complexity and mapping of source and target systems by
data elements and data quality in each system.
Skills of staff relative to EAI and ETL tools.
To determine if your solution should be EAI or ETL, answer the
questions on the next page:

EAI vs. ETL Decision-making Toolkit

YES NO

Do you anticipate data coming from disparate target systems
lying in silos that you need to integrate?

Is your source data straight-forward and does it fit directly to
your target systems? (i.e. no data transformation required)

Do you expect the tool to automatically analyze and execute
operations on your data?

Is the migration a one-off event? (i.e. you do not anticipate
adding additional systems in the future)

In the event of a system or connection failure, do you
expect data rollback or data integrity checks to be executed
automatically?

Do you have any logic involved or business decisions to be
made "on-the-fly" based on your source data?

Do you have a large number of transactions to be completed
and managed swiftly?

Are you finished making EAI skill set and infrastructure
investments?

Do you need a workflow which will help streamline business
processes and decision-making?

Do you anticipate future business growth, additional target
systems, or business mergers which would require sharing
this data across systems?
If you answered YES to the first four questions,
the right choice for you is ETL.
If the answer to the last 6 questions is YES,
then an EAI tool is the solution for you. In that
case, you should strongly consider bringing in an
enterprise architect to evaluate the possibility.
The enterprise architect will ensure that the
pieces of the wider puzzle fit together properly.
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EAI ETL
Reliability (guaranteed
delivery)
Enables real-time business
decisions
Out of box adapters for many
enterprise systems

Metadata driven approach

GUI tools for most tasks (little
coding)
Extremely efficient for large
data volumes

High upfront cost

Relatively complex design
patterns

High upfront costs

Complexity of tool
Batch oriented

Most suitable for real time

data needs
High volume, low footprint
data exchange
Many consumers of the same
data

Suitable for large volumes of

data
Generally used to move
data between two or more
databases/data repositories

8.
DrAwing BounDArieS: eAi vS. etl
9.
the Bottom line
If data integration is the business pain point you
are facing, the most effective solution will be ETL.
However, if your real problem is process integration,
you will be better off with an EAI implementation.
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we maximize outsourcing investments through an onsite/off-
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