Oracle Data Integrator (ODI) in an SOA environment

Oracle Data Integrator (ODI), formerly known as Sunopsis, is a very impressive BI tool. Question is: is this tool useful in a SOA environment, too? Well, there are two relevant features:

1) Basic Web Services für Data Operations

2) Mass data processing

The first one is interesting on the first view: Generate data access services, based on the data access mechanismens of ODI. But for SOA services, this feature is too basic. You can generate a data access service for one (and only one) table, for example. If you have a join, you’re out. That’s a usecase I nearly never have in reality and which has nothing to do with Contract First Service Design,

Where ODI is really helpful is the job of mass data processing. Often you see the pattern, that a bpel process is used for batch operation. Let’s say, you have a small bpel process, which runs fine, takes some data and writes that data in a second system. Now someone decides, that this bpel process can be used in a batch run and tries to instantiate 500.000 instances in an overnight batch run. Which engine wouldn’t burst with that? That’s the moment, where ODI comes to the scene. If you need massive batch transfers of data, start an ODI step in your bpel process, but never try to do mass data processing within bpel.