Adverity is particularly useful if there is a large range of data sets that you want to combine to get an 'overall' view. Previously we had used Google Analytics, but found that this was too useful for our big client accounts that we were working on. So I think that if there is an individual who is responsible for analytics or data, and also a paid media team then this is a tool which is essential. For companies that have limited activity then I think this tool could potentially over-complicate for less reward.
Denodo allows us to create and combine new views to create a virtual repository and APIs without a single line of code. It is excellent because it can present connectors with a view format for downstream consumers by flattening a JSON file. Reading or connecting to various sources and displaying a tabular view is an excellent feature. The product's technical data catalog is well-organized.
I think it would have been more user friendly if there was more labelling capabilities, so that when you are sharing the dashboard they would explain what the data is - rather than depending on someone knowing how to use the dashboards or being there to explain it.
Our teams found that some of the scheduling functionality could be a little big buggy, so this was something that needed extra care and attention, so therefore may be an area that needs to be improved (unless it was just our account and usage).
Caching - but I am sure it will be improved by now. There were times when we expected the cache to be refreshed but it was stale.
Schema generation of endpoints from API response was sometimes incomplete as not all API calls returned all the fields. Will be good to have an ability to load the schema itself (XSD/JSON/Soap XML etc).
Denodo exposed web services were in preliminary stage when we used; I'm sure it will be improved by now.
Export/Import deployment, while it was helpful, there were unexpected issues without any errors during deployment. Issues were only identified during testing. Some views were not created properly and did not work. If it was working in the environment from where it was exported from, it should work in the environment where it is imported.
Denodo is a tool to rapidly mash data sources together and create meaningful datasets. It does have its downfalls though. When you create larger, more complex datasets, you will most likely need to cache your datasets, regardless of how proper your joins are set up. Since DV takes data from multiple environments, you are taxing the corporate network, so you need to be conscious of how much data you are sending through the network and truly understand how and when to join datasets due to this.
This tool has allowed us to be able to see areas for opportunities, when all of the data has been combined
We were also able to better prioritise actions and where to focus our attention, when we had one view where all of the data was together. This allowed us to deliver better results for our clients, and also have a clearer roadmap of activity
