Confluent vs Oracle GoldenGate comparison

Confluent is an enterprise-ready, full-scale streaming platform that enhances Apache Kafka. 

Confluent has integrated cutting-edge features that are designed to enhance these tasks: 

• Speed up application development and connectivity
• Enable transformations through stream processing
• Streamline business operations at scale
• Adhere to strict architectural standards

Confluent is a more complete distribution of Kafka in that it enhances the integration possibilities of Kafka by introducing tools for managing and optimizing Kafka clusters while providing methods for making sure the streams are secure. Confluent supports publish-and-subscribe as well as the storing and processing of data within the streams. Kafka is easier to operate and build thanks to Confluent.

Confluent's software is available in three different varieties: 

1. A free, open-source streaming platform that makes it simple to start using real-time data streams
2. An enterprise-grade version of the product with more administrative, ops, and monitoring tools
3. A premium cloud-based version.

Confluent Advantage Features

Confluent has many valuable key features. Some of the most useful ones include:

• Multi-language
  
  
  • Clients: C++, Python, Go, and .NET
  • REST proxy: Can connect to Kafka from any connected network device
  • Admin REST APIs: RESTful interface for performing administrator operations

• Pre-built ecosystem
  
  
  • Connectors: More than 100 supported connectors, including S3, Elastic, HDFS, JDBC
  • MQTT proxy: Gain access to Kafka from MQTT gateways and devices
  • Schema registry: Centralized database to guarantee data compatibility

• Streaming database
  
  
  • ksqlDB: Materialized views and real-time stream processing

• GUI management 
  
  
  • Control panel: GUI for scalable Kafka management and monitoring
  • Health+: Smart alerts and cloud-based control centers

• DevOps automation that is flexible
  
  
  • Confluent for Kubernetes: Complete API to deploy on Kubernetes
  • Automated Ansible deployment on non-containerized environments

• Dynamic performance 
  
  
  • Self-balancing clusters: Automated partition re-balancing across brokers in the cluster
  • Tiered storage: Older Kafka data offloading to object storage with transparent access

• Security that is enterprise-grade 
  
  
  • Role-based access control: Granular user/group access authorization
  • Audit logs that are structured: Logs of user actions kept in dedicated Kafka topics
  • Secret protection: Sensitive information is encrypted

• Global resilience
  
  
  • Linking clusters: A real-time, highly reliable, and consistent bridge across on-premises and cloud environments
  • Multiple-region clusters: Single Kafka cluster with automated client failover distributed across multiple data centers
  • Replicator: Asynchronous replication that is based on the Kafka Connect framework

• Support
  
  
  • Round the clock enterprise support from Kafka experts

Reviews from Real Users

Confluent stands out among its competitors for a number of reasons. Two major ones are its robust enterprise support and its open source option. PeerSpot users take note of the advantages of these features in their reviews: 

Ravi B., a solutions architect at a tech services company, writes of the solution, “KSQL is a valuable feature, as is the Kafka Connect framework for connecting to the various source systems where you need not write the code. We get great support from Confluent because we're using the enterprise version and whenever there's a problem, they support us with fine-tuning and finding the root cause.”

Amit S., an IT consultant, notes, “The biggest benefit is that it is open source. You have the flexibility of opting or not opting for enterprise support, even though the tool itself is open source.” He adds, “The second benefit is it's very modern and built on Java and Scala. You can extend the features very well, and it doesn't take a lot of effort to do so.”

Oracle GoldenGate is a real-time data integration and database replication solution. It can detect data events and route them across networks at very low latencies and integrates well with 100s of combinations of non-Oracle databases, data stores, and clouds.

Oracle GoldenGate Features

Oracle GoldenGate has many valuable key features, including:

• Simple to use web interface
• Fast and easy installation or provisioning
• Command line access via AdminClient that can run anywhere
• RESTful APIs for DevOps
• Offers built-in monitoring but also can be easily adapted to roll your own monitoring
• APIs are protected by Cross Site Request Forgery (CSRF) authentication.

Oracle GoldenGate Benefits

Some of the benefits of using Oracle GoldenGate include:

• Oracle GoldenGate is deeply integrated with the Oracle Database (logging, redo, backup and recovery layer, security, administration, data guard, data vault, autonomous database etc.).
  
  
• It is the most stable, performant, and reliable CDC / replication solution for Oracle.
  
  
• High performance: Oracle GoldenGate is capable of sub-second latency for data movement. featuring low impact capture, routing, transformation, and delivery of transactional data.
  
  
• GoldenGate is the only CDC / replication tool that keeps pace with new and emerging innovations (security, features, data types, etc) in the core Oracle Database.
  
  
• The solution supports a wide range of use cases, from conventional OLTP data replication and high availability to data lake ingestion or multi-cloud ingestion, SaaS application replication, and messaging replication.
• GoldenGate is the only CDC / replication technology certified for Exadata, Exadata Cloud Service, and Exadata Cloud at Customer.
  
  
• For fault-tolerance, GoldenGate has its own mechanism to keep track of how much work is completed and how much is pending. This mechanism is independent of any database and ensures, with the help of automatic gap-resolution, that no data loss occurs.
  
  
• GoldenGate uses its own proprietary format files for keeping the committed data coming from the source database, making it independently functional irrespective of the database in use.
  
  
• To maintain the performance and consistency, only committed data is sent. Uncommitted data is captured by GoldenGate, but is discarded after receiving a Rollback.
  
  
• With GoldenGate, data sending is in “near real time,” which reduces the possibility of latency.

Reviews from Real Users

Below are some reviews and helpful feedback written by Oracle GoldenGate users.

PeerSpot user Steve-J., Cloud Migration Software Consultant - UK & EMEA at 1PLACE, says, "What I have found the most valuable about GoldenGate is that it does real-time and no-downtime migrations. Its migrations are fast. There are not many tools like it on the marketplace."

Pinak S., Senior Manager of System and Database at ESL, mentions, “We like how in GoldenGate the heterogeneous database is supported. Sometimes the client actually needs a schedule and needs to ensure the state of databases for reporting purposes. With that in mind, we have been able to configure GoldenGate for certain schema. The solution is quite stable. They've recently improved the ease of implementation.”

A Database Administrator at a manufacturing company explains, "It moves the data as you set it up, and it works. I am also very impressed with its stability and scalability. It is not super feature-rich, but the new releases have more functionality. It recently had more native integrations with Oracle Database. If you are using it against an Oracle database, it has a lot more functionality."

An Oracle ERP DBA Consultant - Oracle Super Cluster T5-8 Admin at a government comments, "GoldenGate can connect and collect data from multiple sources, such as SQL Server."