Likelihood to Recommend When data is in a system that needs a complex transformation to be usable for an average user. Such tasks as data residing in systems that have very different connection speeds. It can be integrated and used together after passing through the SAS Data Integration Studio removing timing issues from the users' worries. A part that is perhaps less appropriate is getting users who are not familiar with the source data to set up the load processes.
Read full review 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.
Read full review Pros SAS/Access is great for manipulating large and complex databases. SAS/Access makes it easy to format reports and graphics from your data. Data Management and data storage using the Hadoop environment in SAS/Access allows for rapid analysis and simple programming language for all your data needs. Read full review Export data into excel. Export data into excel using a pivot table functionality. Navigation between windows is intuitive and easy to understand. Good for SQL novices and experts alike. Read full review Cons Requires third-party drivers to connect to common data sources like SFDC, MS SQL, Postgres. Debugging errors from the logs is a complicated process. E-mail alert system is very primitive and needs customization to make it more modern, Cannot send SMS alerts for jobs. Read full review 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). Would be nice if there were fewer releases. Read full review Likelihood to Renew We are happy with the software and its functionality. As a SAS-shop, DataFlux is a logical choice for complex data integration.
Read full review Usability The main negative point is the use of a non-standard language for customizations, as well as the poor integration with non-SAS systems. However, there is no doubt that it is a high-performance and powerful product capable of responding optimally to certain requirements.
Read full review 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
Read full review Performance It worked as expected.
Read full review Support Rating With SAS, you pay a license fee annually to use this product. Support is incredible. You get what you pay for, whether it's SAS forums on the SAS support site, technical support tickets via email or phone calls, or example documentation. It's not open source. It's documented thoroughly, and it works.
Read full review Alternatives Considered Because of ease of using SAS DI and data processing speed. There were lots of issues with AWS Redshift on cloud environment in terms of making connections with the data sources and while fetching the data we need to write complex queries.
Read full review Although Toad and
UltraEdit are both great products, from an SQL standpoint Toad is a much better editor and troubleshooter.
Read full review Return on Investment We have more users who can connect to the many different data sources. Our users do have existing SAS programming knowledge and that can carry over. Business functions are starting to rely on SAS Data Integration Studio work product shortly after introduction. Read full review 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. Read full review ScreenShots