Addressing a business intelligence project is important to proper assessment of the ETL tool that we will use. The tool based on which we will implement our procurement processes of the Datamart, Datawarehouse or storage structure based on which further exploit the data. It is a cornerstone for the design, construction and subsequent evolution of our BI system. We will analyze technical issues only, without entering into the economic aspects or otherwise (licenses, agreements, technical support, tool changes, etc. ..) . Note that the ETL processes, are closely linked to the processes of data profiling and data quality, here we will not consider.

There is an ever greater need in the Business Intelligence environment to have the information in the shortest time possible, data generation cycles getting shorter and updating of data in near real time. There is talk of 'Operational Business Intelligence (OBI)' and 'Real Time Decision Support'.

It is critical to reaching operational data analytic environments in shortest possible time. There is a need for a 'Real Time Data Integration'.

In the optimization of these data integration processes, we must consider both the usual source data (ERP's, CRM's, operating systems, databases, flat files, Excel, XML, etc. ..) and other from more immediate nature such as messaging queues and on-line information accessed via Web services or RSS.