ETL Gets Even Smarter

New extract, transform and load technology shortens 'time to intelligence'

"Accurate data consolidation is increasingly challenging. Organisations have to deal with a plethora of data sources, multiple lines of business and a range of platforms," says Leigh Bates, Product Manager, SAS UK. "This can mean missed opportunities and incomplete information delivered to the business." By contrast, the updated ETL Server handles data from distributed, operational silos in a timely and cost-effective way, ensuring credibility and consistency with integrated data quality, and the ability to manage processes more easily on an enterprise scale.

The SAS server outperformed other ETL tools by more than 60% in throughput benchmark testing. Bates says, "It provides the best of both worlds - organisations no longer have to choose between sacrificing analytic capabilities and accelerating their ETL performance."

Highlights
SAS Enterprise ETL Server is the only ETL solution with fully integrated, out-of-the-box, customisable data cleansing routines. It offers unparalleled platform support (from desktops to mainframes) and a customisable knowledge base to define corporate data interpretation standards.

• Provides a single point of control
• Streamlines and automates processes to improve efficiency and simplify metadata management
• Reduces deployment and maintenance costs
• Reduces the time required to integrate critical data into decision-making processes

SAS Enterprise ETL Server also eases the burden of ETL development and maintenance by:

• Providing access to a wide variety of external data files, including legacy formats, without writing custom code
• Facilitating the integration of existing SAS code into the process
• Providing documentation and audit information for re-using and maintaining code
• Providing wizard-driven interfaces to simplify metadata capture
• Supporting real time processing, resulting in more efficient and timely ETL routines
• Supporting the most advanced data lineage and impact analysis capabilities, from data source through to data mining models

Bates says these new and enhanced features "will make the ETL process more transparent to IT staff and decision makers while reducing development costs."

The user's perspective
At Gloucestershire Constabulary, SAS Enterprise ETL Server is being used to identify quality issues and provide the foundations for more effective business intelligence. Nick Churchill, Database Administrator, says the SAS solution "saves a huge amount of time and resources… SAS^® ETL Studio is really easy to use considering how powerful it is. In no time you are producing reports that will amaze senior managers."

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For more information on SAS Enterprise ETL Server, please visit http://www.sas.com/technologies/dw/entetlserver/index.html