dbt vs. SnapLogic

dbt (Data Build Tool) is best suited for doing the data transformation. dbt is just a transformation tool and it is not suitable for building a data pipeline which requires extraction of data and loading. dbt is well suited for SQL based transformation logic and it is less appropriate when transformation logic requires python.

Incentivized

Snaplogic is unique from other IPASS tools if you're very sensitive about data security as they have an on-premise option where your data never needs to leave your data center. And data pipelines can be quickly created if Snaplogic has the requisite connector to your data sources. On the downside, if you're transforming a large amount of data for example in training machine learning models, a tool with elastic compute capability is more appropriate.

• user experience makes it easy to work with SQL and version control
• customer success team and the dbt (data build tool) community help establish best practices
• thorough and clear documentation

• Their customer service response time is brilliant.
• SFTP tasks do a great job in reading the file directly from the server, instead of having to download it and then read it.
• Tasks expose the ability to run them using external job schedulers.
• Once you have a server up, setting up SnapLogic service does not take long. They have good documentation and customer support too.

Incentivized

• Slow load times of the dbt cloud environment (they're working on it via a new UI though)
• More out-of-the-box solutions for managing procedures, functions, etc would be nice to have, but honestly, it's pretty easy to figure out how to adapt dbt macros

Incentivized

• Git integration outside of Github (Bitbucket, and other git service providers)
• I would like to see an improved way to perform unit testing within the SnapLogic framework, as opposed to the manual approach
• I would prefer that the underlying source of SnapLogic pipelines be more human-readable, although it is a GUI approach to authoring pipelines

Incentivized

This has been hands down the BEST software company I have ever used and dealt with. I am a 25 year IT veteran at this college. They go above and beyond in soliciting our feedback/input and proactively follow up about bugs, issues, etc. I have given multiple potential clients my thoughts and after seeing the SL demo they all sign up. I appreciate their support model, it's REFRESHING!

Incentivized

dbt is very easy to use. Basically if you can write SQL, you will be able to use dbt to get what you need done. Of course more advanced users with more technical skills can do more things.

Incentivized

It is very powerful but has a steep learning curve

Incentivized

They can be prompt but they have not been as useful as I've wanted. We had a bug that affected many of our customers through an API connection between SnapLogic and our platform. Eventually they were able to figure it out, but it took a long time of negotiating between our engineering team and theirs. Additionally, we installed the SnapLogic groundplex for our customers and we've run into a bunch of problems of connectivity. If SnapLogic offered to be on those calls with our clients to troubleshoot how to fix these problems, I would give them a better grade here.

Incentivized

The groundplex in our VPC is very nice for security reasons and the SnapLogic team was extremely helpful during our implementation

Incentivized

Matillion is graphical versus dbt, which is SQL code-based (that, of course, is a matter of personal preference and not an objective advantage). The integrated testing, documentation generation, lineage, etc., were additional criteria that led us to choose dbt.

Incentivized

Boomi was our runner-up product. The pricing model was much higher and cost-prohibitive. They were not as flexible with pricing on a non-profit higher education institution. We did love their integration code library shared across all clients. The user interface was on par with Snaplogic as well as the features that come included. Overall, seemed like a solid product just found something better for a lower price point.

Incentivized

• In 3 months we re-wrote the data warehouse (15-20 sources) in dbt with 3 developers.
• We are using it continually for the past year with no issues.
• Sorry, I don't have ROI numbers but the impact was huge.

Incentivized

• We had a positive impact at our organization where handful of developers were able to integrate more than 50 systems in less than a year. It has helped us a lot by providing access to data that was previously not possible or unimaginable or get in such easy format.
• The only place where it didn't have a positive impact was for a realtime application integration project requiring on the fly aggregations, wherein this tool claimed it could do it but wasn't able to.

Incentivized