June 23, 2015 at 4:04 pm
I have been forced to use WhereScape RED latest version. It sucks. It is too easy to get the metadata out of sync with the database. Repeatable deployments is nearly impossible. The OLAP cubes are also out of sync with the metadata.
The IDE is from 1995. Buttons work on mouse-click-down instead of mouse-click-up. Menus work as expected. Some scroll bars do not display context-menus. There is no user-interface elements to relate objects together. For instance, if I run a report, there is no way to jump to a table or procedure listed in the report. There is no way to change some properties unless you recreate/rebuild/regenerate. Everything is a dialog, making it impossible to compare properties of different object. The search feature is a joke as it cannot search for values with an underscore, yet the application uses underscores in default naming convention. Lack of source control is a huge problem. I can go on and on.
If you are a small shop, then WhereScape RED can jump start your data warehouse implementation and you may be able to maintain it.
If you are a large shop, only a strict process will ensure your data warehouse doesn't become a Big Ball of Mud.
June 23, 2015 at 4:43 pm
Hi itisme_fred,
Change management is real pain in many datawarehousing environments when your sources constantly change.
This is an environment issue, not a tool issue. You would have the same problems with SSIS, WSR or other ETL tools.
Good governance and scheduled releases can help control and mitigate that.
Anybody that has worked on WSR knows that the GUI is not sexy and there is kind of a reason for that. This was a tool conceived by data warehousing practitioners while building warehouses. It was not built by Apple or Microsoft employing sexy Palo Alto graphic designers, it was built by hard-won veterans of the practice. You don't get the sexy looks but you know that under the hood is as optimized as it can be.
My personal experience with the tool is that it allows you to do stuff much faster than others once you get the hang of it and the documentation in a time like this where agile practices are bastardized and everybody gets away with not documenting anything, is priceless.
Regarding comparing objects and doing cool stuff, the whole metadata is exposed in tables that you can query with a very simple data model, I suggest you invest a bit of time there and most of your answers can be found.
Search the forum, it has a lot of answers on that regard.
Cheers
June 24, 2015 at 1:59 pm
>>Change management is real pain in many datawarehousing environments when your sources constantly change. <<
I disagree. All objects including data can be scripted. That generated script should be checked into a source control system. There is no support for source control management system. At best is a poorly implemented versioning system.
>>This is an environment issue, not a tool issue.<<
Again, no. It is a tool issue. If the WhereScape RED IDE is suppose to make me more productive then it needs to support source control managment out-of-the-box. Period.
>>GUI is not sexy<<
>>kind of a reason for that.<<
>>hard-won veterans of the practice<<
Another excuse for being software written by amateurs. Only suitable for small shops. For instance, WhereScape RED recently had to be fixed because it introduced a bug where dropped indexes where not recreated. I am talking about a user-interface that is fundementally flawed. There are significant design-bugs. Just looking at the menu system indicates that features were just added without any forethought. WhereScape RED is a collection of in-house developer scripts and utilities.
>>that under the hood is as optimized as it can be<<
From my inspections, that is completely untrue. The optimization comes from the SQL Database Engine doing the work through scripts.
>>My personal experience with the tool is that it allows you to do stuff much faster than others once you get the hang of it<<
You mean once you acquire the skill to use a tool, you become more productive. I agree. Yet, WhereScape RED is only a small piece of the puzzle and it is easily broken. It lacks features that all modern IDEs support. As I said, it is still stuck in 1995.
>>documentation<<
Is fairly useless from a technical and user point of view. The documentation is great at solving the biggest problem with WhereScape RED IDE, single document interface. The documentation allows me to see all properties on an object that the IDE does not provide.
>>metadata is exposed in tables that you can query with a very simple data model<<
This makes absolutely no sense. Why use an IDE at all? In addition, shouldn't you be using the `Ws_admin_v`views and not directly querying the tables?
>>Search the forum, it has a lot of answers on that regard.<<
Obviously, you haven't searched the forum; otherwise, you would realize that it is slow, displays no results, or irrevelant results. Douglas Barrett even agrees that searching is fairly pointless.
I quote: "Yes the forum is pretty rubbish – its being upgraded to a new version which is supposed to have much better search built in."
To summarize, if you are a small shop where you have one or two developers, I think the WhereScape RED process can be an advantage. Large shops should avoid it, unless you have an expert on staff who can master the quirks, bugs, and annoyances of the product.
June 27, 2015 at 9:32 pm
itisme_fred,
Like I said on my previous email, the challenges you seem to have are the same with any of the tools that are mentioned here. By change management I was talking structure changes and not data. If a column is dropped in your source and this is being referenced by your ETL, no software out there will fix itself.
This trail had gone cold for a long time however I wrote trying to help you out, since the language is your email conveyed some frustration.
Thanks for picking through my email though, good reading.
July 7, 2015 at 5:34 pm
WhereScape RED Review
Significant architectural issues
Updated: Jun 17 2015
http://www.itcentralstation.com/product_reviews/wherescape-red-review-33056-by-garym
Excerpt retrieved from the above link on July 7th, 2015:
"The compelling selling point for this and similar tools as "datamart in a box" providers is that they are pre-built frameworks and documentation. The opportunity is that staff with little data warehousing experience can get up to speed easily and not have to worry about building logging, orchestration and error frameworks or even know much about data warehouse design.
Unfortunately this tool's basic architecture has severe flaws which make it likely impractical for most real world marts or data warehouses. It has some significant cons in the following areas:
- Metadata support specific (cannot share across multiple) target database
- Unreliable lineage
- Lacks capability to interface with application API's
- Lacks out-of-box CDC control capabilities
- Poor/outdated GUI
- Primitive logging and error handling
- Forced duplication of staging data multiple times
- Inability to separate source data capture from targets (tightly couples sources with targets)
- Stores all objects in single target database causing number of issues such as backup/recovery, fragmentation, limited organization options for objects"
July 7, 2015 at 9:09 pm
Thanks for your update. I actually have pointed out many of these issues long time ago. I kindly made suggestions but were not treated. But at least I know that my concern years ago were not rubbish like previous post said.
I indeed no longer reply this thread and moved to a different area rather than a DW designer/architect but thanks for your update.
Though I have had a not so good memory for the way I was responded (not in this post), I still wish Wherescape Red to grow and to have a successful business.
thanks all.
itisme_fred (7/7/2015)
WhereScape RED ReviewSignificant architectural issues
Updated: Jun 17 2015
http://www.itcentralstation.com/product_reviews/wherescape-red-review-33056-by-garym
Excerpt retrieved from the above link on July 7th, 2015:
"The compelling selling point for this and similar tools as "datamart in a box" providers is that they are pre-built frameworks and documentation. The opportunity is that staff with little data warehousing experience can get up to speed easily and not have to worry about building logging, orchestration and error frameworks or even know much about data warehouse design.
Unfortunately this tool's basic architecture has severe flaws which make it likely impractical for most real world marts or data warehouses. It has some significant cons in the following areas:
- Metadata support specific (cannot share across multiple) target database
- Unreliable lineage
- Lacks capability to interface with application API's
- Lacks out-of-box CDC control capabilities
- Poor/outdated GUI
- Primitive logging and error handling
- Forced duplication of staging data multiple times
- Inability to separate source data capture from targets (tightly couples sources with targets)
- Stores all objects in single target database causing number of issues such as backup/recovery, fragmentation, limited organization options for objects"
December 18, 2015 at 3:47 am
I suspect at least one of the members involved in discussion is the vendor. This is the worst software I have used in my 3 decade career. I just can't imagine any actual customers recommending it unless it is all they know and their data volumes are small enough it can handle it and there is only 1 developer using a given repository target. Notice the lack of reviews of wherescape that aren't from the vendor testimonials? That should tell you something.
May 11, 2016 at 1:05 pm
See the review on itcentralstation.com
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