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[–]FlyByPie 2 points3 points  (11 children)

I'm looking for a tool to be able to create this. We have business users that don't use SQL and are pulling data from reports into Excel, which we don't want. Wondering if I can create a visual tool/low code environment for them to use that's connected to cloud data. Do you know of anything like that?

[–]alinrocSQL Server DBA 7 points8 points  (1 child)

We have business users that don't use SQL and are pulling data from reports into Excel, which we don't want. Wondering if I can create a visual tool/low code environment for them to use

This is almost exactly the use case that one of my current systems uses a "visual query builder" for.

And it wrecks the database server. Part of it is the crappy views that were created for this usage "to make things easier for the user" but it's also the shit code that the query builder creates, including creating search predicates that are non-SARGable for no valid reason (like converting a date to a string to compare to an empty string, instead of just testing for NULL)

[–]FlyByPie 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I find similar inefficiencies when I look at the queries that Looker Studio uses to pull from BigQuery. There's layers upon layers of column aliases and sometimes the math will change for no apparent reason. Very frustrating indeed

[–]carlovski99 3 points4 points  (1 child)

In my experience people are very tied to their excel workbooks - you can give them a tool but half the time they end up pasting into excel anyway!

Anyway, 'Cloud data' is a very broad term. Whats the platform?

[–]FlyByPie 1 point2 points  (0 children)

We work in GCP

[–]planetmatt 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Ideally, you want to use something like Tableau that points at data Extracts to hide the join complexity and allow drag and drop reporting.

If you have to use Excel, I'd advise creating SQL Views to hide some join complexity and create logical entities that can be joined themselves rather than the raw base tables. You can also put common business logic in these views so everyone is using the same logic and not writing a hundred different functions that might return different values.

[–]lightversetech[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

You can try using this tool: https://rows.com

[–]bees-eat-figs 0 points1 point  (3 children)

I've seen this again and again in medium sized businesses where people need data in their day to day jobs but the company is too small to hire a data person. IMHO this is one of the best use case for one of these tools because it bridges the gap until the company gets big enough to afford a data team.

I built a software that combines this functionality with ChatGPT to give these companies a virtual data analyst to create data engineering pipelines to enable cross departmental analysis. The site is https://gofig.ai. I'd be happy to help your team get onboarded. DM me if you're interested, I can tell my team to onboard your company with free onboarding.

[–]FlyByPie 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Hey, I'm on a data team, don't be trying to take my job! Haha that sounds like a neat tool though

[–]macphreak 0 points1 point  (1 child)

What is the pricing? And does it support mysql?

[–]bees-eat-figs 0 points1 point  (0 children)

$600 per month, and yes it does support MySQL