Direct Query

What is direct query?

Direct query is a technique that enables people to directly access and analyze data stored in a database. This differs from querying techniques used by traditional business intelligence (BI), which relies on importing data into a centralized data warehouse or in-memory engine for analysis.

It connects analytics directly to an external data source, such as a relational database or a NoSQL data store. People can then issue queries against the data source and receive results in real-time. With a direct query, data does not need to be duplicated, extracted, or prepared before running the query.

Businesspeople often access direct query capabilities through a dedicated analytics platform. Direct query tools vary in their complexity. Modern decision intelligence platforms like Pyramid Analytics support a unique direct query capability accessible to people of all backgrounds, even those without technical analytics experience.

It has several advantages over traditional BI approaches, including:

• Flexibility: People can access a wider variety of data sources than would be possible with traditional BI. Broader access to data in a single instance can support more accurate, timely, and holistic decisions.
• Agility: It can help people analyze data in near-real-time. Real-time analyses are impossible with traditional BI approaches because data must be extracted, transformed, and loaded (ETL) into a data warehouse before being analyzed.
• Usability: It can make data analytics more accessible to a wider range of people in technical and non-technical roles. Users need not know how to leverage ETL actions with a data warehouse to use direct query.
• Scalability: It can be more scalable than traditional BI because it does not require importing large amounts of data into a centralized data warehouse. Instead, people can access data stored in an external database without copying it into a data warehouse.
• Security: It allows a person to access data while preserving the governance, security, and business logic inherent in the source. This reduces the risk of overwriting or allowing unauthorized access to data.

How is it evolving?

Increasingly, direct query functions also include features that improve the user experience and deliver better results based on specific needs, unique roles, or familiarity with analytics tools. For example:

• Natural language processing (NLP): NLP enables people to ask questions in natural language and receive results in data visualizations.
• Interactive visualizations: Interactive visualizations can help people to explore data and identify patterns and trends in a low-code or no-code analytics environment.
• Augmented analytics: Augmented analytics features like predictive modeling and recommendations can help people make better decisions by providing them with AI-driven insights and even automated explanations that use natural language.

Direct query features are sure to improve as business needs and the roles of businesspeople and IT professionals continue to evolve.

How does direct query with Pyramid Analytics work?

Pyramid Analytics is a leading provider of decision intelligence technologies — the next evolutionary stage of business intelligence (BI). Pyramid Analytics’ direct query tools improve the performance of its decision intelligence platform among businesspeople. Together, direct query and Pyramid Analytics’ DI capabilities help organizations make better decisions faster. Providing direct access to our easy-to-use data and analytics tools delivers fast results.

Contact us today to learn more about direct query capabilities with Pyramid Analytics.