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7 Best Change Data Capture (CDC) Tools of 2023

Streamline your ETL data pipelines with efficient replication.

How To
October 3, 2022
7 Best Change Data Capture (CDC) Tools of 2023
Streamline your ETL data pipelines with efficient replication.

As your data volumes grow, your operations slow down. 

Data ingestion - extraction of all underlying datasets, transformation, and loading in a storage destination (such as a PostgreSQL or MySQL database) - becomes sluggish, impacting processes down the line. Affecting your data analytics and time to insights.

Change Data Capture (CDC) makes data available faster, more efficiently, and without sacrificing data accuracy. 

In this blog we are going to overview the 7 best change data capture tools of 2023:

  1. Keboola
  2. Oracle GoldenGate
  3. Qlik Replicate
  4. IBM InfoSphere Change Data Capture
  5. Fivetran (Former HVR)
  6. Hevo Data
  7. Talend
#getsmarter
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Build data products in days instead of months and focus on what really matters - delivering value to your customers.

7 Best CDC tools of 2023

1. Keboola

Keboola is an end-to-end data platform as a service offering out-of-the-box features for a variety of data ops:

  • CDC data integration. Keboola offers hundreds of components integrating data sources and destinations. From SaaS applications to data warehouses, extract, transform, load, and replicate your data from a wide variety of data sources. 
  • Straight-forward visual interface. All operations can be performed with a couple of clicks without the need to write scripts.
  • Cloud, on-premise, and hybrid ready. Replicate data bi-directionally across native cloud solutions and on-premise or within the same environment.
  • Compliance. With the wide range of monitoring and logging abilities that come with Keboola, all your data events are inspectable and traceable. All the data movements and storage are executed at enterprise-level quality, offering the highest levels of regulatory compliance with all the important regulations, such as GDPR or SOC.
  • A multitude of analytic tools. Keboola does not just replicate data, it helps you build your ETL data pipelines end-to-end. Push your data into BI tools, machine learning tools, or experimentation Sandboxes.

Build data products in days instead of months and focus on what really matters - delivering value to your customers.

2. Oracle GoldenGate

Oracle GoldenGate is a software solution that allows you to replicate, filter and transform data from one database to another database. The CDC replication is used across multitudes of sources which enables real-time analysis. 

Primarily it is designed to replicate Oracle Database with optimized high-speed data movement. But it can also be used to replicate a range of sources, such as Microsoft SQL Server, IBM DB2, Teradata, MongoDB, MySQL, PostgreSQL, HDFS, Kafka, Spark, and cloud object stores across cloud providers.

Alongside data replication, Oracle GoldenGate is also used for end-to-end monitoring of stream data processing solutions without the need to allocate or manage compute environments.

3. Qlik Replicate

Qlik Replicate is a data ingestion, replication, and streaming tool that captures changes in the source data or metadata as they occur and applies them to the target endpoint as soon as possible.

Qlik Replicate uses parallel threading to process Big Data loads, making it a viable candidate for Big Data analytics and integrations. 

Data can be integrated across the major data solutions: from RDBMS (PostgreSQL, MySQL, Oracle, DB2, …), data warehouses, to cloud vendors (AWS, GCP, Azure).

4. IBM InfoSphere Change Data Capture

IBM InfoSphere CDC is a replication solution that captures database changes as they happen and delivers the changes to target databases, message queues, or ETL solutions.

The unit of replication within IBM InfoSphere CDC is called a subscription and it contains mapping details that specify how data in a source data store is applied to a target data store.  

Though IBM InfoSphere CDC connects to multiple data sources, it is best tailored to the suite of IBM data products.

5. Fivetran (former HVR)

Fivetran is a modern data integration solution, providing a fully automated data pipeline that centralizes data from any source and brings it to any warehouse. 

Fivetran offers CDC as a feature and primarily uses log-based replication. By acquiring HVR, they can now also replicate databases and move data between on-premise solutions and the cloud, while being able to continuously analyze changes in data.

Recommended read: Fivetran alternatives.

6. Hevo Data

Hevo Data Platform offers CDC replication out of the box through no-code data pipelines.  Its main purpose is to integrate data from many sources into your data warehouse.

Hevo’s user-friendliness is high, but it comes at the expense of inferior monitoring abilities, and fewer customization features - what you see is what you get.

7. Talend

Talend is the enterprise-class open source CDC replication software. It offers connections and replications across a myriad of data source types within its easy-to-use interface. 

Though Talend is extremely powerful as a CDC tool, it lacks version control as one of the features and it is definitely geared more towards huge enterprises.

Which CDC tool should you choose?

The ultimate tool decision will depend heavily on your specific use case.

Ask yourself these questions when choosing the best CDC tool for your company:

  1. What is the total cost of ownership? This includes tool pricing, but also hosting, onboarding, and learning the tool, and maintenance fees or customization fees.
  2. Who will use the tool? If the tool is targeted toward engineers, it has to have a code-pen or programmatic access. If you envision non-technical people using the tool, choose the one with a user-friendly and intuitive UI.
  3. Does the tool cover all of my main use cases? Just the main ones? Check which integrations are available. Is your database supported by the vendor? Do you envision extracting data from a Third-Party App that is not on the tool’s list of supported apps?

Keboola is the CDC tool that meets all criteria

Keboola CDC feature
Keboola offers CDC to both Keboola-provided and independent database backends.

Here’s how:

  1. Fair pricing model. In Keboola, you only pay for what you use. The pricing is determined with the universal currency of “computational runtime minutes”, so all your data operations - whether we are talking extracting data, transforming them, loading them, building machine learning algorithms, or any other activity - can easily be measured and compared without having to do mental gymnastics for your calculations. 
  2. Speedy onboarding. Keboola features an intuitive UI, and drag ‘n’ drop capabilities that enable even non-technical people to gain valuable insights from data. For novices, there is also Keboola’s Data Academy, a self-learning platform that equips you with all the platform knowledge needed to master data operations.
  3. Unlimited use cases. Keboola is a data platform designed to streamline and automate your data operations end-to-end. Meaning it can cover all the use cases you have in mind, and then some. For example, Rohlik, a Czech unicorn, uses Keboola for logistics and supply chain optimization, smarter personalization and marketing, to create dynamic pricing models, and to deliver real-time data for better decision-making. The ways Keboola can be utilized are endless.

And these advantages are what hits Keboola’s CDC functionality out of the ballpark:

  • Speed. Each replication starts where the last one is finished, meaning no event gets processed twice. 
  • Lightweight. Performance of the SQL will in no way be affected by the replication.
  • Scalability. No limit to how many tables you want to replicate.
  • Automation. If new tables are added to your database, Keboola’s companion app can fetch these and automatically add them to the replication process.

Explore all the CDC power Keboola has to offer. For free.

Keboola is the end-to-end data platform that streamlines and automates the heavy lifting behind data operations. The intuitive UI is built for ease and speed, meaning all your data processes can be deployed in a couple of clicks. 

Keboola connects to over 250 sources and destinations, so you will never have to waste time writing change log capture systems. Quite the opposite, with Keboola you are able to save time, as all components used in CDC are maintained by Keboola. Meaning no more debugging custom scripts and relying on professional teams to take care of your database replication.

Sign up for our forever-free tier and see for yourself how easy it is to perform CDC in Keboola.

Frequently asked questions about Change Data Capture (CDC)

1. What is Change Data Capture (CDC)? 

Change Data Capture (CDC) is a process of identifying changes in a database, data warehouse, or data lake and replicating those changes to another destination storage.

CDC intercepts which table rows have been changed (added, deleted, altered), and replicates those changes making the entire replication process orders much more efficient. 

In modern data environments, where the volume of data keeps growing, CDC is the only viable data replication technique that scales with your data operations.

2. What are the advantages of Change Data Capture (CDC)

Integrating your data through CDC has multiple advantages:

  1. Speed. The number of data points replicated with CDC is always lower than its alternative - bulk updates of the entire database. This makes CDC much faster as a replication technique. 
  2. Decreased network burden. Sending too much data across different cloud solutions or geographical locations causes delays due to bandwidth hogging and latency. CDC lowers the volume of transferred data and unburdens the network operations. 
  3. Free production resources. CDC is often used to move data from a production database to an analytic database. Because CDC relies on copying data via logs, the replication process does not additionally tap into the limited resources of the production database. Read more about log-based replication here. 
  4. Synchronous replication. Because CDC taps into transaction logs to replicate databases, CDC can be used for real-time data replication. CDC supports streaming ETL pipelines and real-time analytics is achievable via CDC.

You can dive deeper into how CDC achieves the multiple benefits for data operations with our in-depth guide.

3. What is the difference between CDC and SCD?

Data Capture (CDC) identifies and processes only data that has changed, making that data available for further analysis.

A Slowly Changing Dimension (SCD) is a dimension that stores and manages relatively static data which can change slowly but unpredictably, rather than according to a regular schedule.

Image sources:

  • Oracle GoldenGate: https://docs.oracle.com/goldengate/m1221/gg-monitor/GMNCH/welcome.htm#GMNCH111
  • Qlik Replicate: https://help.qlik.com/en-US/replicate/May2022/Content/Global_Common/Content/SharedEMReplicate/Console/console_designMode.html
  • IBM InfoSphere Change Data Capture: https://www.g2.com/products/ibm-infosphere-datastage/reviews
  • Fivetran (former HVM): https://www.g2.com/products/fivetran/reviews
  • Hevo data: https://www.g2.com/products/hevo-data/reviews
  • Talend: https://www.g2.com/products/talend-cloud-data-integration/reviews
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