I’m curious to hear how folks are using CData Connect, in particular on-prem in a business setting. It seems one need we keep running across is that non-technical folks want to be able to download their data to Excel. So often what they’ll do is have someone create a Tableau Dashboard and publish it to Tableau Server, but then they ignore the dashboard and go straight to the “Download” button to send the data to Excel. But then because Tableau is inflexible they rarely like what Tableau gives them so they end up having to do a lot of manual work to get to what they really need. I’m imagining that CData Connect could eliminate the middle man, so that if someone with enough SQL knowledge could define the SQL query, then it could be made available on CData Connect for anyone that has rights to access it and they could download the data that they need in the format they desire. Other more technical folks might have the alternative of doing the same sort of thing using Toad or similar query tools, but they wouldn’t have the ability to distribute the query definition to a larger user base.
Data virtualization seems to be the buzzword, but from what I’m reading products like Dremio or Denodo require more up-front setup of the data, and it would be limited to that data which is pre-defined within the tool and built into their repository so you’d lose flexibility. I’m thinking CData Connect is closer to the source data, so as long as you have access to the database there would be a connector in CData Connect that you could use to connect to it directly. And I believe I’ve read that there’s some level of governance within CData Connect, so only certain people are authorized to see certain data.
Am I close in my thinking? This is the kind of thing we’ve talked about needing for years, every time we hear of someone wanting to download data from their Tableau dashboards.
