Hello All,
I’m looking out for some information on AB-Initio tool… Have someone worked on that tool?? How would you rate the tool compared with other ETL tools like Infa, DataStage etc… The tools advantages and disadvantages… If someone have some documentation detailing its product range, features etc it will be highly useful…
Thanks
Sri
Sridharan 
(BOB member since 2002-11-08)
Ab Initio, does not profess to be only an ETL tool. It is an Enterprise Application Integration tool.
It has virtually no competition when it comes to dealing with HUGE amounts of data. Nothing works faster or has shorter development time.
The company is a bit unusual, so much of what you are asking for is not public knowledge.
Steve Krandel 
(BOB member since 2002-06-25)
I’ve attended an awareness training on abinitio. I can say it is very powerful in handling large loads of data. I found it not so user friendly like datastage or informatica. Development is slower in abinitio as compared to these 2 tools.
Regards,
Shobhna.
Shobhna (BOB member since 2003-11-19)
Thanks Steve and Shobna for the valuable info… So Steve do you mean to say it has Shorter Development Time or Development is Slower as told by Shobhna… BTB Shobna do you have some kind of doc which gives the features and the various components and other things… It will be really helpful…
Once again thanks…
Sri
Sridharan (BOB member since 2002-11-08)
Although I am not a developer, I used to work for a firm who specialized in Ab Initio(AI). Their experience was that they could develop and test a complex system in less than half the time it would take to do the same work in Informatica.
It is very unlikely anyone will be able to send you anything electronic from Ab Initio. They don’t market and sell their software the same as other companies. Anyone who would send you anything would be in violation of their non-disclosure agreement. You can’t learn this product unless you work for a customer who has it or for one of their very few partners. They do not allow offshore development to take place, either.
Steve Krandel (BOB member since 2002-06-25)
Thanks Steve for your information… I’m not looking out for copyrighted docs or documentation of AbInitio but looking out for Docs (personal ones)which some people would have prepared listing the feature list like one we have for BI tools… Also I’m not looking at learning that product but want to know its features…
Once again thanks…
Sridharan (BOB member since 2002-11-08)
Hi,
The major Disadvantages of ab initio in comparision with other ETL tools in a Technical Perspective are:-
Business Perspective:-
Very costly. this high cost is justified only if you have to process One Billion records per day!!
very Secretive about thier product
Not proactive and enthusiastic in the marketing approach
Due to all these reasons Gartner has not included this in the Magic Quadrants for DI tools in Oct 2007.
This Ab initio product is just not even worth evaluating. This does not qualify as a tool by any stretch of imagination!! Informatica or Dat astage are much better any time for any requirement.
sashish20 (BOB member since 2007-11-07)
I hate to bash you on first BOB post, but…
You’re responding to a thread that has been dormant for 3 years.
This is not a good evaluation of the product. Most companies that are doing very large databases are using AbInitio because it is clearly the best tool in the space for working with enormous datasets.
AI is not an ETL tool. It is an entire application integration environment. Integration projects can be done much faster and data can be moved and loaded in times that Informatica and DataStage can only dream of.
Gartner doesn’t include it in the Quadrants because it doesn’t compete with regular ETL toos.
Steve Krandel (BOB member since 2002-06-25)
Well, Gartner doesn’t include it in their MQs for generic “application integration”, either… because of Ab Initio’s bizarre secrecy, nobody can find out about it. If I were sashish20 above, I’d delete my own post vs. risking a lawsuit.
dnewton (BOB member since 2004-01-30)
I’ve started using Ab Initio and as such am bound by their non-disclosure clauses in our org’s contract. However, I would certainly refute the post that sashish20 has made based on my usage.
I’m from a pure business intelligence/data warehouse background with the usual T-SQL & PL/SQL being as “geeky” as it gets for me in terms of coding. I certainly don’t have any unix skills beyond the basic ls, cd, command line stuff and haven’t encountered any stumbling blocks to using the tool so far. CRON functionality is fine for scheduling. Point 4 is ludicrous - components are the functional part of the system! Point 5 again - you think through your logic before starting your ETL design and as such need nothing more than the functionality within the components.
I can only assume that (s)he has either had no proper training in the tool or has worked somewhere where it has been set up badly in an effort to reduce costs to a minimum. If you’re going to use it purely as an ETL tool, that’s fine, but it offers so much more and returns a far greater return on investment as a corporate data tool.
I’m not going to enter into a debate as I’ve probably reached the limit on what I can say - to any Ab Initio guys reading this, if I’ve said anything you think I shouldn’t have done, I’ll remove it, but I’ve been as precise but as nebulous as I can. 
Suffice it to say, I find it easy to use and if you do get to use it, you’ll see what I mean about the nebulous precision above. 
Ab Initio means Starts From the Beginning. Ab-Initio software works with the client-server model.
The client is called Graphical Development Environment (you can call it GDE).It resides on user desktop.
The server or back-end is called Co-Operating System. The Co-Operating System can reside in a mainframe or unix remote machine.
The Ab-Initio code is called graph ,which has got .mp extension. The graph from GDE is required to be deployed in corresponding .ksh version. In Co-Operating system the corresponding .ksh in run to do the required job.
you can get more information from http://ab-initio-tutorials.xblogspot.comx/
Ragji (BOB member since 2010-02-11)
Ragji, I have broken the link in your post so that it will no longer work.
Unless someone can prove that Ab Initio is no longer so secretive and no longer has nondisclosures, you shouldn’t be posting screenshots of their product on your blog.
dnewton (BOB member since 2004-01-30)