Varigence BimlFlex review #1

Review by:	Bob
Company:
Country:	New Zealand
Linkedin profile:
Review date:	July 31, 2017

What do you like best?

It’s built for the MS Stack. BIML is great and BIMLFlex is including most of the patterns we would have wanted to create. It’s faster to buy than build.
It creates SSIS packages that can be deployed directly to a SQL Server.
It fits with our CI stack, without restricting our choices.
It makes the migration path to Azure simpler.

What do you dislike?

It’s new, so market support is not extensive.
It’s a big change for traditional DW developers to learn the new skills required to be effective.
It works best for SSIS experts as you need to understand what automation is doing.

Recommendations to others considering the product.

Expect a long learning curve.
It doesn’t magically remove the need to manage the inherent complexity.
It’s based on patterns, so your patterns need to be well thought out.

What business problems are you solving with the product? What benefits have you realized?

Replacing multiple legacy DWs.
It’s faster than hand coding SSIS packages.

In which period or periods have you used the product and are you still using it?

We started our journey with BIML and MIST 4.0 in 2014. We started working with BIMLFLex in April 2017. We have dropped our first production cut, but are still ramping up our teams skills in using BIMLFlex.