Talend and Sugar

[MikeGall]

I am curious if anyone has experience using Talend as plumbing between Sugar and another application. If so, what is your opinion and would you use it again?

[josh.sweeney]

Talend is a pretty good tool once you learn how to use it. The documentation could be a little better.

You can also check out Jitterbit if you are weighing your options.

[Greetal]

Hello,

Talend has components with SugarCRM and many other applications, making it possbile to work efficiently using Talend Open Studio. Talend has over 400 components available for its users. Find the components here: http://www.talendforge.org/components/index.php .

Talend is reliable and using it with SugarCRM is an excellent choice. Because of its components, its stability and the community, Talend is a good tool. Talend Open Studio is an open source ETL tool for data integration and migration experts. For more information: http://www.talend.com/

[SergeiLo]

Hi,

Did you try Apatar open source ETL tool? It has a connector for SugarCRM, also you may use database connectors to work with SugarCRM data. You may import, export, update and upsert your data in SugarCRM.

Apatar is very easy to work with, drag and drop functionality, very user friendly, designed for non technical users.

Regards,
SL

[opnsrcguy]

Unlike the last two guys on this thread, I don't work for one of the vendors. If you take a look at Greetal's postings, they all relate to Talend. Sergei works for Apatar. Again, look at his postings.

Here is an unbiased opinion...

You have to know that there is a difference between integration and ETL. ETL is a product focused on data warehousing, as I was a DW consultant for a Big 5 then 4 consulting firm for many years. It is based in extract (take bulk data from source), transform (convert the data to a standard format), and load (put bulk data in an operational data store). If you aren't using a data warehouse or data mart and uploading hundreds of thousands or millions of records in a single condensed set, then you are performing integration in either real-time or batch processing.

If you are looking for a product to start your ETL project with, then have to drop into code to complete it (Talend is a code-generator), then Talend is the best option. The downside to it is it runs locally and really doesn't have a lot of power and it really isn't an integration tool. The difference between being a semi-truck vs. many race cars. The loading of the semi truck takes longer to set up and it carries a much larger payload, but takes longer to get there. The race cars are engineered for speed, but hardware resources in many cases can be an issue if you are trying to bring the same payload as the semi.

Apatar I did try, but it was very limiting in my opinion. It is graphical, yes, and more suited for integration than Talend, but has a lot of maturing to do.

Pentaho Kettle is an ETL tool that handles bulk data very well, and has other functionality like business intelligence (reporting) that can be an advantage. In my opinion it is nice as it doesn't generate code like Talend, and virtually anything can be handled within the interface. It talks about being a data integration tool, but again, really is more ETL focused. Most ETL vendors are saying this now as data warehousing isn't as big as it was 10 years ago.

Jitterbit is another option if you aren't involving a data warehouse or data mart. It doesn't require adapters like the other vendors above and uses standards based approaches for connectivity making it easier for the non-techie to quickly establish connections and everything is graphical here. They do real-time and batch application and data integration better than the other three. Again, if you have very large volumes of data going into a DW or DM, then look to Pentaho.

[eggsurplus]

Mule is a great ESB (enterprise service bus) for just this sort of thing. We use it for our plumbing to integrate a good handful of different apps together.

http://www.mulesource.org/display/COMMUNITY/Home

[Greetal]

The downside to it is it runs locally and really doesn't have a lot of power and it really isn't an integration tool.

Hi Opnsrcguy,

Then what do you call an integration tool? Talend Open Studio is a data integration tool. It can perform data integration and migration faster than other applications.

Check this benchmark performed by a Sun expert: http://blogs.sun.com/aja/entry/talen...ata_processing. Look at the results of the benchmark to see the performance.

And if I answered this thread, MikeGall had a question about Talend. I thought I could give him an answer.