One common use for the ODI SDK is to generate reports leveraging the information that can be mined from the repository. One of our customers is actually comparing specifications from their analysts (normalized in an Excel spreadsheet) to the code for the mappings (found in the ODI repository) and reports on discrepencies between the two. 

IT service continuity is a strategic goal for IT organizations, especially when it comes to mission-critical systems. A common interruption to IT services is planned outages such as system migrations, upgrades, consolidation etc. Because they can be planned, IT teams typically schedule them to "off business" hours to minimize impact on end users.