Faster business insights. Verse 2 in the 12 Days of …
Our gift to you this season is wrapping up our favorite blogs about a product into a collection, with a song to go with each! Each week in December, stay tuned as we add on to the song and post new verses in our version of "The 12 Days of … Projects." Watch the video below.
Watch the video!
The second verse of "The 12 Days of Projects" is about Toad Data Point.
With each new post, hear one more verse of our version of "The 12 Days of … Projects." At the end of the month, we'll post the entire song with a summary and links to our favorite posts. Can you guess which Toad product will be next?
Keep reading! The following blogs are my favorite collection of Toad Data Point blogs, with my own spin on "The 12 Days …."
12 Days of Toad® Data Point
Millions of users around the globe use Quest Software® Toad® products. Each of these Toads focus on a specific relational database flavor. Toad solutions for Oracle, SQL Server, SAP, DB2, and others are purpose-built specifically for DBAs and Developers that need to go functionally deep in order to effectively develop and administer these platforms.
But we haven’t forgotten about you business data analysts out there. Did you know there is a Toad flavor that is data source “agnostic”? That Toad flavor is called Toad Data Point (Professional) and it’s one of our top selling solutions.
Why is Toad Data Point so popular? Let me list a few of its value propositions. Since we’re close to the holidays, I feel inspired to list some of these to the tune of “12 Days of Christmas.” (A popular theme we’re running with on Toad World!). I’ll start the song for you, and mention one value prop for each day. (We won’t tell anyone if you want to hum along.)
On the first day of Christmas my true boss gave to me:
One Tool to Rule Them All.
You’d be hard pressed to find one data access product that connects to as many data sources as Toad Data Point Pro:
- Relational databases
- Flat files
- Excel Worksheets
- Microsoft Access
- Sources in the Cloud
- Business intelligence data stacks
- NoSQL data
Toad Data Point Pro connects to some forty different sources out of the box, and that’s not even counting sources accessible via ODBC.
Many customers have saved loads of cash by consolidating their different data access point products down to just one: Toad Data Point. Check out Robert Pound’s short video on connection sources, "Connections in Toad Data Point“.
On the second day of Christmas my true boss gave to me:
A Blender.
Toad Data Point has a visual query builder that allows blending different data sources together. Without something like Toad Data Point, customers still tell me that they frequently have to export disparate data sources to external files, and then siphon these into temporary “staging tables” in a database of choice to produce the “mixed” results. Toad Data Point can eliminate these time-consuming and unnecessary steps. It does the data blending for you behind the scenes.
For more info, here’s a short video on Performing Cross-Connection Queries by Toad product manager Julie Hyman.
On the third day of Christmas my true boss gave to me:
A Psychologist.
Let’s face it. Sometimes your data can have, well, um, “behavioral disorders”. Toad Data Point Pro has a profiling engine that analyzes a copy of your data either from its source, or from one of your queries. One session with the Profiler, and you’ll get a professional assessment. It’s like a free session with a data psychologist. Have you ever wondered…
- What percentage of rows have important missing info?
- What does the distribution of values look like? What are the min/max values? In-between values?
- If there are any unusual patterns in the data values?
- How much of the data is deviating from the “norm”?
- What IS the norm for your data values?
The Data Profiler can answer these questions and more! Link over to Robert Pound’s Profiler Overview for more information.
On the fourth day of Christmas my true boss gave to me:
Emigration Papers.
No, not for you, but for your data. Your projects may require that data take up residency on other platforms. Last week someone asked me if he can migrate data directly from 100+ Postgres tables over to SQL Server tables. Toad Data Point Pro has the ability to perform compare and sync operations between the same or different data platforms (where allowed, and where data types map nicely, of course).
Check out one of our blogs on how to perform a cross-platform compare and sync.
On the fifth day of Christmas my true boss gave to me:
Conditioner.
There are times when you need something to make your data smooth, silky, and tangle-free. Data can get messed up as it travels from place to place. Or maybe it’s simply not in the correct format when you need to join it with other data. Before you pass data to another team, have you ever needed to:
- Convert data to another type or format?
- De-duplicate records having the same column values?
- Trim extraneous characters?
- Split a column value into sub-string components?
- Extract the week of the year from a date-time stamp?
If so, you need to check out Dan Hotka’s Overview of Toad Data Point’s Transformation and Cleanse Engine.
On the sixth day of Christmas my true boss gave to me:
A Vacation.
Hey, I’m not saying that buying Toad Data Point Pro gives you authorized leave and a free trip to Hawaii. But Toad has an Automation Engine that could free up some of your valuable time. A customer of mine used to have to work on weekends. He hiked into the office on Saturday mornings for three hours to process and package up data that had to be ready for top brass first thing each Monday morning. Then he saw Toad’s Automation feature at a tips and tricks session. Today, a multi-step Toad automation script automates those manual processes and runs unattended on Saturday nights. Toad gave this customer time back with his family. That benefit, says he, “is priceless”.
Quest product developer Debbie Peabody wrote a nice blog series about automating tasks within Toad Data Point, starting with her Introduction to Automation.
On the seventh day of Christmas my true boss gave to me:
Portfolio Management.
You have your data projects. It’s likely not the case that one query produces the desired end result set in one shot. I’m thinking of a customer that recently showed me her data preparation process. That data process manifest had over 50 different query steps. The output for most of these steps were needed as input to query steps farther down the process pipeline. There were many such dependencies, and any change in an early query step in the process propagated to later queries that affected the end result.
Now, one could save all those queries separately in an organized file folder. But that doesn’t preserve the order of execution or query dependencies.
The latest releases of Toad Data Point Pro have a second graphical interface that introduces a new “Workbook” concept.Think “organized” portfolio management for your data processing jobs. Check out Julie Hyman’s Introduction to Toad Data Point Workbook.
Well I started the song for you, but I stopped at seven days. There’s at least five more days to sing about. What feature in Toad Data Point has made your day? Saved your reputation? Propelled you to hero status? Contributed to your promotion? Please take a few minutes, click on the “Start Discussion” link at the bottom, and tell us about it! You can help us finish the song in time for the holidays!
How to get the most out of Toad Data Point
Learn how Toad Data Point can help you access and prepare data faster. Seamlessly access more than 50 data sources—both on premises and in the cloud—and switch between these data source with near zero transition times. Whether you are currently a Toad Data Point customer or just getting started with our free 30-day trial, learn more and access the Toad Data Point User Guide.
If Toad Data Point is helping you connect, query and prepare data for faster business insights, buy it now or contact a sales representative.
Questions?
I hope this blog is useful to you. If you have any questions, please post questions to the Toad Data Point forum on Toad World.
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More blogs from Gary
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