As you may already know by now, it’s [OTN Appreciation Day](https://oracle-base.com/blog/2016/09/28/otn-appreciation-day/" target="_blank)! The idea was thought up by Oracle ACE Director Tim Hall to give thanks to the Oracle Technical Network that we all love and use on a daily basis (see [#ThanksOTN](https://twitter.com/search?q=%23ThanksOTN" target="_blank) on Twitter).

The focus for these blog posts is not only to give thanks to OTN, but also to generate some interesting conversation around different features of various Oracle products. One of my favorite features of Oracle Data Integrator 12c is its flexibility. This isn’t necessarily a single feature of the product, but more of an overall assessment of ODI as a whole. Let me breakdown a few of the features that make ODI flexible and easy to adapt. Note: I actually mentioned a couple of these in my previous blog post, “[Oracle Data Integrator 12c: Getting Started - What is ODI?](GHOST_URL/2016/10/odi12c-gettingstarted-what-is-odi/" target="_blank)”, but why not point them out again?

Knowledge Modules

The typical main goal of Oracle Data Integrator is to develop mappings that use on or more source datastores to load one or more target datastores. These mappings can have many different components that join, filter, aggregate or transform the data before it reaches its final destination. Logically, this is completed in ODI by dragging lines between boxes and configuring properties for each component.

The physical implementation of a mapping is set to use one or more Knowledge Modules to generate the code or objects required for specific loading and integration types. These KMs are code templates that use the ODI Substitution API to fill in the mapping metadata based on the logical implementation. The great part is that these KMs can be easily customized and modified to fit your data integration needs! Your environment doesn’t have to conform to the tool, you get to make the tool conform to your environment.

"But wait!", says the current ODI developers. “We can’t modify Component Knowledge Modules.” Yes, that’s a true statement. The current ODI 12c version has two types of KMs: Template and Component. The former have been in the product since inception and are easily customizable while the latter are more of a black box. But, as announced at Oracle OpenWorld last month, a brand new, highly extensible Knowledge Module framework, and the ability to edit all KMs, is coming soon!

Procedures

If Knowledge Module customization doesn’t give you the flexibility necessary to perform specific actions in your data integration project, we also have ODI Procedures. These objects are used to execute a specific set of code for any sort of task. With so many different technologies accessible via ODI, you can write nearly any bit of code to execute. Procedures are often used for exception handling, file processing, and all types of scripting via Jython or Groovy. These objects just add to the ultimate flexibility of Oracle Data Integrator.

Java API

Last, but definitely not least, we have the [ODI SDK Java API](http://docs.oracle.com/middleware/12211/odi/reference-java-api/index.html" target="_blank). Using the SDK, we can perform nearly every action that can be completed via ODI Studio. That’s a huge amount of flexibility! Now if there is a batch creation of objects or change necessary, I can write a few lines of Groovy code, execute the script, and it’s all completed in seconds rather than days of manual work. Take a look at a couple of examples I’ve posted in the past, [adding columns](GHOST_URL/2012/05/oracle-data-integrator-11g-groovy-add-columns-to-a-datastore/" target="_blank) to a set of ODI Datastores and [creating Interfaces](https://vimeo.com/100215678" target="_blank) (in ODI 11g) based on a SQL query. Any chance I get I try to use the ODI SDK to make my development life just that much easier.

There you have it, my favorite feature of Oracle Data Integrator 12c - flexibility. I hope you all have a great OTN Appreciation Day and thanks for reading! And of course, [#ThanksOTN](https://twitter.com/i/moments/785865678481944576" target="_blank)!