what's ETL???

ETL is that which you develop custom systems by hand to..

-backup the truck and copy legacy systems data ( 20 different systems )
-marry the data together from different legacy systems ( compute farm )
-Compress the data by summarizing
-Do some transformations
-Load into Oracle using sql*loader Direct path you may get 1/4 billion rows loaded per hour
-transform the data some more using pl/sql and perl or java
-compress the data again
-roll fact tables up by dropping columns
-complete star schema
-optimize your partitioned world and make fast

Be told by snobby and stupid large companies you cannot work in their ETL department because you lack direct experience with...

Ab Initio
Informatica
etc.

GUIs that attempt to automate what you can do by manually and probably do better.

Quote:

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Originally posted by DaPi
He's probably not lazy, just too busy recompiling his UNIX kernel . . . .

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Or waiting for his Windoz server to come back up (again) ;)

Quote:

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Originally posted by BJE_DBA
Be told by snobby and stupid large companies you cannot work in their ETL department because you lack direct experience with...

Ab Initio
Informatica
etc.

GUIs that attempt to automate what you can do by manually and probably do better.

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At least you're not bitter about it. :D

Quote:

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Originally posted by slimdave
At least you're not bitter about it. :D

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Good point. I do sound bitter, and I am.

/begin bitter rant

I cant tell you how many companies insist on ab initio or informatica experience which you cannot just download and learn so it has to be on the job which you cant get unless you already have it ;)

2 Things about that irritate me:

1) All those ETL tools are is best practices wrapped up into software and possibly worker performance boosters. Although you may spend 90% of your time on the 10% of the functionality that it does not automate.
2) Its more of this perception out there that IT people lost the ability to learn anything. Its true - HR has figured out that IT peoples brains are simply at the max - 100% utilization and there is no more capacity available for learning something new so they better find someone who 'has on the job experience', nevermind that the person might have been terrible at it. :D

OTH they have thousands of resumes to pick from so they just think they are cherry-picking the best candidates and quite possibly they are.

But I know after doing all of this with custom sql*loader/pl-sql/java I could rapidly learn some gui attempting to accomplish the same thing...yawn..

..hey I figured out how to be a Certified Oracle DBA, Novell CNE, Commericial pilot but no way could I ever learn something as complicated as Informatica ;)

/end bitter rant

I use Informatica - I should say that I'm forced to use Informatica -- and it pretty much sucks. There's so many things i hate about it i could go on forever.

Quote:

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Originally posted by irehman
Jeff, what does STFW stand for?

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Schweizerische Technische Fachschule Winterthur

The golden rule of working in IT - it takes experience to get experience. The problem, of course, is how do you get experience in the first place?

Siebel and SPAM, oops, I mean SAP, are classic examples of this. Sure, you can go to Siebel University and get certified, but how do you get on an implementation team without having been on one before, because virtually ALL advertised Siebel jobs require previous/prior implementation experience.

Quote:

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Originally posted by DaPi
Schweizerische Technische Fachschule Winterthur

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Evidently you have been abroad for too long.

Quote:

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Originally posted by slimdave
I use Informatica - I should say that I'm forced to use Informatica -- and it pretty much sucks. There's so many things i hate about it i could go on forever.

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LOL!

I guess its harder to tolerate I mean learn than I give it credit :)

Hang in there companies love to see that experience. Missed 75 an hour chicago gig in Feb when they changed their minds and decided we need 'an informatica person'.

I did eventually get an offer from them to be employee but I took the gig here at 9000 feet in Golden colorado, elk outside the windows, dumbell weights in the next room....too bad they just canned 30% of the people and handed out 10% haircuts.

At least I am here and happy to be working with 9i,rman and data guard.

Quote:

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Originally posted by stecal
The golden rule of working in IT - it takes experience to get experience. The problem, of course, is how do you get experience in the first place?

Siebel and SPAM, oops, I mean SAP, are classic examples of this. Sure, you can go to Siebel University and get certified, but how do you get on an implementation team without having been on one before, because virtually ALL advertised Siebel jobs require previous/prior implementation experience.

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I hear you. Never was out of work in my life more than 1 week, hopped from startup to startup until last xmas - CLANK!

Jan,Feb,March was an interesting time ( please get the war over with ). I interviewed all over the nation because Colorado was so dead.

Its quite a challenging game now, you have to get noticed with buzzwords out of the stack of 500 resumes. I could go on and on, 3 tiers of interviewing tech-out call, fly-out, high-level commit check, fly-out again.

The only thing they dont ask for is this : 'Must have authored 2 successful books on SAP implementation etc'

Some of these companies are just getting free consulting too.

Well we have 4 qtrs of money here now that we axed everybody. Perhaps I wont be interviewing for another year.

:D