CDC Tool Selection

ITtoolbox as adapted from DW-SELECT discussion group Summary: We need to capture the changes on some Oracle databases. Which is the best CDC tool (low overhead on source system and high throughput (changes/sec)) on the market? Full Article: Disclaimer: Contents are not reviewed for correctness and are not endorsed or recommended by ITtoolbox or any vendor. Popular Q&A contents include summarized information from ITtoolbox DW-SELECT discussion unless otherwise noted.
2/7/2006 By ITtoolbox Popular Q&A Team for

1. Adapted from a response by xiningding on 2/7/2006 The CDC function in Oracle 9.2 is synchronized, and the generation of change records is tied of the original transaction. When there are many changes in source database, there will be performance problems. Meanwhile, in the Oracle10g, the CDC function is asynchronous which gets the change data from redo log. I know a little about Oracle Streams, it can be used as message queue as well. It can also transform data between different databases in asynchronous form by using redo log. 2. Adapted from a response by Nat G on 2/7/2006 We have done a similar exercise to identify the best CDC component available. We have evaluated Informatica PowerExchange, Oracle Streams and Data Guard (Replication to avoid the load on the Production box, so that CDC can work on the Standby database). One way or the other, all of these CDC tools works closely with the Oracle Logminer when you have to capture the changes from Oracle. So it is important that you take the DBA with you for the exercise as we had a situation when the DBA's objected to the running Logminer and supplemental logging the production database, when they came to know of the CDC architecture. Oracle Streams: I believe it supports only Synchronous data capture. You have to build manually the ETL programs using the Oracle Streams. The only advantage is its free of cost. Informatica PowerExchange/Datastage CDC(IBM): Not much off a difference. But physically evaluate the tool (install the laboratory licensed version and see the CPU/Memory utilization.) I believe both these tools calls for a good investment and also you need to buy their core ETL product for a good integration. (Though they promise that their CDC component can work as a stand-alone solution, integration will be a big head-ache). We have finalized on Informatica PowerExchange as our client was already using Informatica PowerCenter for most of their ETL requirements. Another product worth considering could be OWB 10g Paris. I believe Oracle started shipping this release from Jan 06. This release of OWB seems to have CDC option as well. This might be a cost-effective option but the caution is it is pretty new. You might be the first one to use the CDC option on the OWB Paris release.