First up, Informatica is a data integration tool, while Teradata is an MPP database with some scripting and fast data movement capabilities.
Advantages of Informatica over Teradata:
- It functions as a metadata repository for the organization’s ETL ecosystem. Informatica jobs (sessions) can be arranged logically into worklets and workflows in folders. It leads to an ecosystem which is easier to maintain and quicker for architects and analysts to analyze and enhance.
- Job monitoring and recovery: It is easy-to-monitor jobs using Informatica Workflow Monitor. It is also easier to identify and recover in the case of failed jobs or slow-running jobs. It exhibits an ability to restart from failure row step.
- Informatica Market Place: It is a one-stop shop for lots of tools and accelerators to make SDLC faster and improve application support.
- It enables plenty of developers in the market with varying skill levels and expertise to interact.
- Lots of connectors to various databases are available, including support for Teradata MLoad, TPump, FastLoad, and Parallel Transporter in addition to the regular (and slow) ODBC drivers.
- Surrogate key generation through shared sequence generators inside Informatica could be faster than generating them inside the database.
- If a company decides to move away from Teradata to another solution, then vendors like Infosys can execute migration projects to move the data and change the ETL code to work with the new database quickly, accurately, and efficiently using automated solutions.
- Pushdown optimization can be used to process the data in the database.
- It has an ability to code ETL such that processing load is balanced between the ETL server and the database box—this is useful if the database box is ageing and/or in case the ETL server has a fast disk/large enough memory and CPU to outperform the database in certain tasks.
- It has an ability to publish processes as web services.
Advantages of Teradata over Informatica:
- Cheaper (initially): No initial ETL tool license costs. There is only less OPEX costs as one doesn’t need to pay for yearly support from Informatica Corp.
- Great choice if all the data to be loaded are available as structured files—which can then be processed inside the database after an initial stage load.
- Good choice for a lower complexity ecosystem.
- Only Teradata developers or resources with good ANSI/Teradata SQL/BTEQ knowledge are required to build and enhance the system.