DSXchange

These days we are hearing a lot that ESB tools like Mulesoft, Oracle SOA and few others are also able to do ETL. What is the difference between DataStage and Mulesoft. As I didn't have a clear idea on ESB tools and would like to know experts opinion on these ESBs. Thanks in advance.

This discussion is not one that I've heard too often anymore...it was a bigger issue at the height of the "service oriented archtecture" days, with comparisons of ETL tooling with ESB or "EAI" (enterprise application integration tooling). Both kinds can move and transform data, but the latter was often more geared towards API protocols and detailed industry formats such as SWIFT and EDI. There are many facets of how they differ, and the lines greyed over time between them, as ETL tools can do real time and ESB/EAI tools can do more batch stuff, but generally speaking ETL tooling has always been more geared towards high end, very heavy batch, and EAI tooling more towards transactions and custom protocols. ETL tooling with more integration for data warehousing and integration with business intelligence tools and EAI tooling more oriented towards complex APIs and programmer oriented interfacing. Again, the lines are much more grey now than they used to be. WebSphere TX is another candidate in this grouping of EAI/ESB tools, as is various MQ tools.

Ernie