Considering a Business Analysis tool? Consider Toad Data Point.
October 23, 2019
Considering a Business Analysis tool? Consider Toad Data Point.
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Overall Satisfaction with Toad Data Point
Toad Data Point (TDP) is a business analysis tool. I work with department heads to show how it will solve their data needs and make better/quicker data analysis decisions. This tool is perfect if your data is in more than one data store. It supports almost 50 different data stores including Sales Force Automation, OBIEE, and other big applications. Toad supports connectivity to almost 50 different databases/Microsoft Office products/and ODBC compliant data stores.
It is also relatively easy to learn and has many of the same cool features of the Toad (database development tool) product. You don't need to know anything about SQL to do serious data analysis.
Toad Data Point is also integrated with Intelligence Central so it is very easy to share your workflows AND your data with others in your department/your company. It is more of a department kind of tool though. Intelligence Central also allows you to automate things so your data is organized and ready for use upon your arrival in the morning.
It is also relatively easy to learn and has many of the same cool features of the Toad (database development tool) product. You don't need to know anything about SQL to do serious data analysis.
Toad Data Point is also integrated with Intelligence Central so it is very easy to share your workflows AND your data with others in your department/your company. It is more of a department kind of tool though. Intelligence Central also allows you to automate things so your data is organized and ready for use upon your arrival in the morning.
- Ease of building SQL/accessing data, using the Query Builder.
- The new workflow feature mimics products like Hyperion and is centered on how business analysts are used to working with their data.
- The dimensional views are definitely a hidden gem. This feature allows you to display similar data in multiple windows, then filter on specifics. ALL windows will then reflect the same data. An example here would be salaries organized by dept then salaries organized by job type. As you filter, both analyses will reflect the filtered data.
- You can easily create spreadsheets and pivot table spreadsheets.
- You can email the results to the team/you can save the results in the intelligence central repository so others can access it.
- You can automate all of these things.
- 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.
I find Toad Data Point easy to use and easy to format and extract data to Excel. The Workbook (new interface) is closely tied to email. Intelligence Central is also closely tied to email. I find this tool essential if your data is stored in different database types or some data is in say Oracle and other data is in an Access data store...or even an Excel spreadsheet can be treated as a data store by Toad.
Discoverer was easy to extract data from Oracle and save to Excel. OBIEE needs a lot of training.
Discoverer was easy to extract data from Oracle and save to Excel. OBIEE needs a lot of training.
Toad Data Point Feature Ratings
Using Toad Data Point
200 - I am a support person for Toad Data Point. Toad Data Point is a data analysis tool that allows a single access to data stored in multiple different databases and storage areas. The above number is based on larger departments. I have seen Toad Data Point being used by single departments containing just a few people to multiple departments in larger organizations where they have hundreds of people accessing data and creating spreadsheets.
Toad Data Point installs at the work station. Toad Intelligence Central has a server component. This component needs an administrator but this admin person can be the help desk for a larger organization or the department head for a small organization. Skills??? Simple PC skills to install the product is all that is needed. If you have installed Microsoft Office (for example), you can install Toad Data Point.
- Automatically subset the data for business analyst use the next day
- Ease of sharing work already done
- Even the novice can create and analyze data using Toad Data Point
- Create spreadsheets easily for additional analysis. ie: use Toad Data Point for a data access tool
- Provide some additional data analysis using its dimensional views (comparing similar data with data filtering)
- Common interface for both the novice and SQL savvy business analyst
- Ability to automate the steps
- To gather and organize the data for specific departmental needs.
- Ease of sharing of the work between users (vacations, out of the office, etc).
- Ease of using the Query Builder. You know your data, and Toad Data Point can access it.
Using Toad Data Point
| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
Like to use Relatively simple Easy to use Technical support not required Well integrated Quick to learn Convenient Feel confident using | None |
- Building the work flows are easy and intuitive.
- The query builder allows data access via mouse operations.
- Saving data and sharing data and workflows/spreadsheets with others is easy.
- In the traditional interface, the Automation can be a bit dicey for the novice.
- If you don't buy the Intelligence Central, your ability to share data is limited.
- There is not a lot of assistance with the Report Writer feature of the traditional interface.