Because every company's needs and situation are different, there is no one-size-fits-all database replication solution. Which tool is most appropriate for your needs will likely depend on your budget, staff expertise, and level of commitment to a brand. Some companies will be inclined to tolerate the drawbacks of their database's embedded tools due to budgetary constraints, while other firms may choose to invest in a costly database-vendor provided product because they prefer to stick with a familiar solution.

In the long run, however, and taking into consideration recent trends like cloud services and big data, most companies will benefit from making a database replication tool comparison and finding the solution that will best meet their requirements. Many will find that a platform-agnostic database replication tool offers them the flexibility they need to more quickly and readily adopt up-and-coming technologies and new ways of organizing information.

Questions to Ask When Making a Database Replication Tool Comparison

In performing your database replication tool comparison, here are some basic questions to consider.

• Which source and target platforms will I need to support, now and in the foreseeable future?
• What types of replication will I need – snapshot, real-time, bi-directional and/or streaming?
• Will you need to support heterogeneous data replication? For example, will you migrate data from SQL Server to Oracle or to other non-SQL Server databases?
• Will you need to apply data transformations and mappings in the target database? Or content-based filtering?

Once you've narrowed down your database replication tool comparison to a few options, you may want to try each product first and investigate these three critical questions:

• Does it offer a graphical user interface and a centralized dashboard for replication monitoring and management, reducing the skill and training requirements?
• Is the tool easy to use? How much effort and expertise are required to implement and maintain the technology?
• How much does it cost—for the software, any necessary plug-ins, associated hardware, and staff to manage it?

Database Replication Tool Comparison: Database Vendor-Provided Solutions vs. Qlik

Qlik Replicate® should be on the short list for any database replication tool comparison. Qlik Replicate is a high-performance universal data replication platform that is easy to use and offers quick time to value and substantial cost savings when compared to a tool like Oracle GoldenGate or IBM's data replication product. Our web-based configuration and monitoring console features an intuitive GUI, which hides the complexities of data replication, and allows you to quickly and easily define, configure, and manage replication processes.

Qlik Replicate supports snapshot and real-time or batch-optimized transactional replication, leveraging log-based change data capture, or CDC for database replication technology. Our solution automatically generates target database schemas, performs heterogeneous data type mapping and propagates source DDL changes to the target..

Highly scalable and suitable for both Oracle database replication and SQL Server database replication, Replicate supports both homogenous and heterogeneous data replication and works with a wide range of databases, data warehouses, Hadoop distributions, and big analytics platforms—providing you with maximum flexibility for your current and future needs.