A data store is the most basic necessity of any application. If we are generating some data in any application, we will require a backend database for it. Various applications might entail some needs, which would require us to use some specific data sources. For example, if our host operating system is on Unix, we might go for Oracle or any of the databases that are installable on a Unix system to host our data. The following are some common enterprise data stores that are available today:
SQL Server
Oracle
IBM DB2
Sybase
MySQL
PostgreSQL
Teradata
Informix
Ingres
Amazon SimpleDB
We will now look at the tools available at our disposal to transfer the data from some (Oracle and IBM DB2) of the preceding database systems to SQL Server, as that is where our staging database is going to be. As discussed in the previous chapters, the same data in different applications might be represented in different forms; for example, an employee might be uniquely identified by an employee...