Factiva from Dow Jones is a data service that helps companies identify opportunities, accelerate decisions and manage a business's reputation, that includes global news and data accessible via the Dow Jones' research platform, on mobile devices or integrated via advanced feeds and APIs.
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Toad Data Point
Score 8.0 out of 10
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Toad Data Point is a cross-platform, self-service, data-integration tool that simplifies data access, preparation and provisioning. It provides data connectivity and desktop data integration, and with the Workbook interface for business users, it provides simple-to-use visual query building and workflow automation.
A large part of our work depends on the ability to source quality media content from a breadth of dependable sources globally. This is Factiva's bread and butter: it has a very comprehensive list of 'quality' media sources such as nationals, dailies, business journals and magazines from around the world that are easily mined for the content they hold. If you're thinking about anything other than these 'traditional' media sources then Factiva probably isn't your thing. It doesn't do social media.
Appropriate for general querying and some DBA work. It's the universal least-offensive solution for most environments - not best of breed, but not subject to unusual/extensive requirements. It just works. On the other hand, some functionality (e.g. data import/export, snippets) are perfunctory and minimal and seem to be either difficult or impossible to automate. If you need to streamline those operations, you'll be forced to rely on third-party solutions that mostly work on top of (instead of with) TOAD.
Factiva offers excellent search builders so that I am able to narrow my search to specific companies or topics very easily.
Factiva combines a large number of credible sources into one place and allows me to search all of these sources.
Factiva's use of timestamps helps me understand when the news was known by the market which allows me to analyze how (if at all) that particular piece of news impacted the company's stock price.
Provides an excellent starting place for learning about a company and/or industry.
The workflow is a relatively new feature. Quest is adding additional functionality and the workflows are useful now.
Would be nice if the 'Automate' feature was a bit easier to use.
Would be nice if some of the SQL Editor features in the traditional interface worked better in the new workflow interface (although, these are being fixed with each release).
I find Toad Data Point easy to use for both the novice and the experienced business analyst. If all you desire is to access data and create spreadsheets...this is a snap. Toad Data Point actually has cool data analysis features built into it. The newer workflow interface makes automating steps a snap
At the time, Factiva was already being used by the company I worked for - they had developed procedures specifically for using Factiva, so there wasn't really an option. I've used Lexis, Westlaw and Bloomberg exclusively for legal research, so there wasn't really an overlap with Factiva.
It is the least common denominator - not particularly optimized for our environment or workflows.
Hangs or slowdowns add anywhere from 5% - 7% for projects utilizing large/complicated data setts. (This could be due to other IT-imposed constraints and not entirely due to TOAD.)
Trying to perform some operations requires reading documentation and experimenting in order to figure out the TOAD-specific approaches and commands.
It just works (when we understand it). Updates don't break things and things don't suddenly start behaving differently. Best of all, we don't mysteriously lose functionality.
