Choosing the Best MySQL Reporting Tool for Your Team
Which is the best MySQL reporting tool for my team?
Table of Contents:
Introduction
MySQL is an open-source, relational database management system. DB-Engines ranks MySQL as the second most popular database management system in the world. Its massive impact and wide usage have given rise to many MySQL reporting tools that can help you get the most out of it. Thus, picking the best one for your team can be a challenge. Tableau, Knowi, Power BI, Domo, and Looker are some of the common MySQL reporting tools. In this article, we have discussed these BI tools in detail and the features they offer to help you uncover insights from your MySQL data.
Best MySQL Reporting Tools
Tableau
Tableau is a powerful business intelligence tool that comes with a MySQL Connector. The connector requires you to download and install a driver from Tableau’s official website to facilitate communication between the two platforms. The connector can be found under the “Connect” tab after starting Tableau. Tableau’s MySQL connector requires you to provide the name of the server hosting the database. Authentication is done using your MySQL username and password. You can enable the “Require SSL” option if you’re connecting to an SSL server. After successfully connecting to MySQL, Tableau will allow you to select your target database and table or search them using a text box.
Tableau Features
Tableau has the following features for its users:
- Integrations
Tableau comes with connectors to PDFs, spreadsheets, files, cloud data warehouses, and SQL databases such as MySQL. However, Tableau doesn’t have connectors to NoSQL sources. It requires users to use JDBC or ODBC connectors to pull data from such sources. Tableau’s MySQL connector requires you to download a driver from Tableau’s official website and install it for the two platforms to communicate. You must provide the name of the server hosting your database and authenticate users using MySQL username and password. Once connected, Tableau allows you to search for your target database and drag the table of choice into the canvas to analyze your data.
2. Visualizations
Tableau users can generate beautiful and powerful visualizations from their MySQL data. The visualizations include maps, stories, charts, and dashboards. Users can customize the visualizations to meet their desired look and feel.
3. Search-based Analytics
Tableau has a Natural Language Processing feature called Ask Data that enables you to uncover insights from your MySQL data using a common language. Users get instant answers in the form of charts without having to master any query language.
4. Cross-database Joins
Tableau supports cross-database joins, a feature that can help you join your MySQL data with data from other supported sources. Tableau supports inner join, right outer join, left outer join, and full outer join operations. The joins depend on a common field among the data sources involved.
5. Embedded Analytics
Tableau supports embedded analytics, allowing you to embed your dashboards, visualizations, and analytical capabilities into your external products. You can generate a simple HTML embed code and use it to embed your desired content into third-party applications, custom web portals, and data products.
6. Alerts/Anomaly Detection
You can configure Tableau to notify you when your data meets certain conditions. It allows you to configure the alerts on views and dashboards, but not on story points. The alert notifications can be received within Tableau, via Slack, or email.
7. Customer Support
Tableau has a knowledge base full of written materials to help users learn how to use the BI tool. The materials are categorized into various Tableau products. You can type your question within the knowledge base and Tableau will suggest articles that can answer you as you type.
8. Pricing
Tableau has three pricing plans namely Tableau Creator, Tableau Explorer, and Tableau Viewer. Their prices are quoted per user/month and billed annually.
The Tableau Creator plan gives users all the tools needed to perform end-to-end analytics. It costs $75 per user/month. The Tableau Explorer plan delivers the power of self-service analytics into the hands of users and it costs $42 per user/month. The Tableau Viewer plan allows users to view and interact with visualizations. It costs $15 per user/month.
Benefits of Tableau
Tableau offers the following benefits to its users:
- Integrates with MySQL
Tableau supports integration with MySQL, allowing its users to pull data for analysis and visualization.
2. Beautiful visualizations
Tableau is shipped with beautiful, powerful visualizations that you can use to make sense of your MySQL data.
3. Fit for non-technical users
Tableau has Natural Language Processing capabilities, allowing non-technical users to explore and understand their data by asking questions in natural language.
Limitations of Tableau
Tableau comes with the following limitations:
- Complex integration
Tableau requires users to download and install a driver for it to communicate with MySQL. This can be a complex process for users without technical skills.
2. Few integrations
Tableau doesn’t have connectors to some data sources such as NoSQL databases. Users may encounter challenges if they want to join their MySQL data with data from such sources.
3. Legacy architecture
Tableau uses a legacy architecture, a reflection of its founding DNA. Users must use Tableau Desktop to publish workbooks to the Tableau Server or Cloud. Although Tableau excels in exploratory data analysis, it requires the data to be structured and ready for analysis.
Knowi
Knowi is a unified business intelligence platform that brings a new paradigm in MySQL reporting tools by enabling data discovery, querying, aggregation, visualization, and reporting automation. Knowi users have two ways of connecting to MySQL; Directly from Knowi’s UI or using Knowi’s Cloud9Agent to pull data inside their network. After connecting to MySQL, Knowi will pull the list of collections and field samples. You can use its visual builder to generate queries in a no-code environment by dragging and dropping fields or selecting them from a drop-down. Knowi also lets you choose between direct execution and non-direct execution strategies. In direct execution, you run queries directly against the MySQL data source, without any storage in between. In this case, Knowi will display widgets by pulling data in real time from the data source. In non-direct execution, Knowi stores query results in its Elastic Store. This comes with benefits like long-running queries, reduced load on the database, and more. Knowi users can also access a versatile query editor that supports various language modes including MySQL Query Language (MQL).
Knowi Features
Choosing Knowi gives you access to the following features:
- Data-as-a-Service
Knowi’s data-as-a-service feature enables users to work with any data, anywhere. It supports native integration with a wide range of SQL, NoSQL, files, and REST APIs to provide secure access to any data instantly. It also lets users source data from multiple sources by blending data from structured and unstructured sources.
Knowi users can connect to their MySQL database without installing any driver or moving their data. They can connect to MySQL directly from Knowi’s UI or download and install its Cloud9Agent to securely pull the data inside their network. Knowi users can run direct queries against MySQL without any storage in between or choose non-direct queries in which query results will be stored in Knowi’s Elastic Store.
2. Visualizations
Knowi’s presentation layer has over 40 different types of visualizations that you can use to present your MySQL data. You can customize the visualizations to get the desired appearance. It provides filters and drill-down capabilities to help users dig deep into their data. Knowi users with CSS/JavaScript skills can create custom visualizations to meet their unique needs.
3. Ask Questions of Your Data
Knowi has a search-based analytics feature powered by Natural Language Processing to help users understand their data by asking questions in natural language. They can type their questions in plain English within Knowi and get immediate answers even as visualizations.
Knowi users can also embed this feature into their applications to ask questions about their data directly from the applications and get instant answers.
Knowi has also implemented this feature in Slack and Microsoft Teams allowing users to ask data questions directly from these apps and get immediate responses.
4. Multi Data Source Joins
Knowi supports multi-source joins to enable users to join their MySQL data with relational, NoSQL, RDBMS, and APIs on the fly across data centers without moving their data or building complex ETL steps. Knowi supports inner join, right outer join, left outer join, full outer join, and loop join operations. The joins depend on a common field across the data sources involved.
5. Embedded Analytics
Knowi supports embedded analytics, allowing you to embed your dashboards, visualizations, and analytical capabilities into your applications. You can also share dashboards or email reports to enable analytics reporting among offline users.
Users can choose simple URL-based embedding, secure URL embedding with encrypted request payload, or Single SignOn (SSO) API embedding that enables token exchange from your system users to map to Knowi with user rights and permissions.
6. Machine Learning
Knowi has built-in machine learning algorithms to help users combine hindsight and foresight and perform prescriptive and descriptive analytics on their data. It makes it easy for users to integrate machine learning into their MySQL analysis and workflows. You can use its built-in open-source machine learning algorithms or integrate your own.
7. Triggers, Alerts, and Actions
Knowi has an alert feature to help you automate actions and notifications based on your MySQL data. You can send a notification via email, Slack, or Webhook or configure a webhook to initiate a process in a downstream application.
8. Customer Support
Knowi has release notes that guide users on how to use the BI platform. It also has a knowledge base with written documentation to help you learn how to accomplish your tasks using the tool. You can type your questions within the knowledge base and get article suggestions that can answer you as you type.
Knowi has also introduced a community section with sourced questions and answers that can help you. You can contact the Knowi team by filling out a form via its Zendesk-powered chat system and the Knowi support team will get back to you.
9. Pricing
Knowi uses a custom-based pricing approach in which pricing is determined by your individual needs. They have provided a form on their official website that you can fill out to request a price quote. Knowi has three pricing plans namely Basic, Team, and Enterprise. Each plan comes with everything needed for success, including full onboarding and technical support when needed. Knowi offers discounts to startups and nonprofits. It doesn’t charge for email reports that require a user and such in other systems.
Benefits of Knowi
Knowi users have access to the following benefits:
- Seamless integration with MySQL
Knowi has made it easy for its users to connect to MySQL. They don’t have to install any third-party tool or driver to connect to MySQL.
2. Reduced database load
With Knowi, you can use the non-direct execution strategy in which query results will be stored in its Elastic Store. This will reduce the load on the database as you will not need to hit MySQL every time you need data.
3. Supports multi-source joins
Knowi supports the joining of data across different sources. Thus, you can join your MySQL data with data from other SQL, NoSQL, REST API, and JSON/CSV sources.
4. Fit for non-technical users
Knowi has a search-based analytics feature to help non-technical users extract insights from their data using plain English, without mastering any query language.
5. Supports machine learning
Knowi is shipped with built-in machine learning algorithms to help you build machine learning models on your MySQL data.
Limitations of Knowi
Knowi has the following limitations:
- Not open source
Knowi is a commercial tool.
2. Sophisticated user interface
Knowi provides an intuitive user interface for its business users. However, its user interface for data engineers is complex and may take some time to get used to.
3. Out-of-the-box visualizations are not the “prettiest”
Knowi doesn’t have the “prettiest” out-of-the-box Visualizations. However, users can customize them using CSS/JavaScript.
Power BI
Power BI is a BI tool created by Microsoft that comes with a MySQL connector. The connector requires you to first download and install the Oracle MySQL Connector/NET from MySQL’s official website. The MySQL connector can be found in the connector selection window in Power BI. It will require you to provide the name of the server and the database in the MySQL database dialog. You must also choose the type of authentication to use and provide your MySQL username and password. Power BI allows you to choose between encrypted and unencrypted connection to MySQL. After a successful connection, you’ll be able to select the data that you require and load or transform it.
Power BI Features
The following are the key features offered by Power BI:
- Integrations
Power BI is shipped with multiple software-as-a-service connectors to cloud data warehouses, apps, and databases such as MySQL.
Power BI’s MySQL connector requires you to download the MySQL Connector/NET package from MySQL’s official website and install it correctly. You can access the connector by clicking the “Get Data” option in Power BI and choosing MySQL database. It requires you to provide the server and database name to connect to, and your MySQL username and password. You can also choose between encrypted and unencrypted connection to MySQL.
2. Visualizations
Power BI gives you access to various visualizations to help you create reports and dashboards. Examples include waterfall charts, decomposition trees, and doughnut charts. You can download additional charts from the Microsoft AppSource. You can also create custom visualizations and share them with other Power BI users.
3. Ask Questions of Your Data
Power BI has a Q&A feature to enable you to extract insights from your data using natural language. You can type your questions in natural language and get answers as charts and visualizations. Q&A allows you to specify the desired visualization type in your question, or let it pick the best visualization for you based on the nature of your data.
4. Alerts/Anomaly Detection
Power BI has an alert feature to notify you when your data changes beyond certain limits. You can configure the frequency with which Power BI will check your data for the alert condition. The alerts can be received within Power BI’s notification center or via email.
5. Customer Support
Power BI support is included in Microsoft Fabric’s support. It is shipped with written documentation to help users learn how to use the tool. You can also create a support request via Microsoft’s official website and its support team will get back to you. You can also post your question on the Microsoft Fabric Community forum and get answers from other Power BI users.
6. Pricing
Power BI comes with a free plan and two other priced plans, Power BI Pro and Power BI Premium.
The Power BI Pro plan is good for self-service analytics, allowing you to publish and view reports and dashboards. It costs $10 per user/month. Power BI Premium enables you to access Power BI’s enterprise-grade features such as deployment pipelines, larger model sizes, and more frequent refreshes. It costs $20 per user/month.
Benefits of Power BI
Choosing Power BI comes with the following benefits:
- Integrates with MySQL
Power BI allows users to connect to MySQL and pull their data for analysis and visualization.
2. Customizable visualizations
Power BI users can edit their visualizations to improve their look and feel. They can also create custom visualizations to meet their unique needs.
3. Fit for non-technical users
Power BI comes with a Q&A feature that makes it suitable for use by non-technical users. They can explore their data by issuing questions in natural language.
Limitations of Power BI
Power BI has the following limitations:
- Complex integration
Integrating Power BI with MySQL can be a complex process for non-technical users. It requires users to download and correctly install the MySQL Connector/NET package, a process that requires technical knowledge.
2. Limited integrations
Power BI lacks native connectors to some data sources. Users have to create custom connectors to pull data from such sources.
3. Bulky user interface
Power has a bulky user interface, making it difficult for users to navigate from one section to another.
Domo
Domo is a cloud-based business intelligence platform that supports integration with MySQL. You can use Domo’s MySQL connector to pull data from your MySQL database and compile custom reports. You specify the data you want to pull by creating an SQL query. You can access this connector by visiting Domo’s Data Center and clicking “Database” from the toolbar at the top of the window. The connector will require you to provide details such as the hostname for your MySQL database, the database name, port number, and your MySQL username and password. After connecting to MySQL, you can create an SQL query to select data. Domo also has a Query Helper to help you generate SQL queries by selecting tables and table columns.
Domo Features
Domo has the following features for its users:
- Integrations
Domo has over 1,000 connectors to help users connect to cloud data warehouses, business applications, proprietary systems, and on-premise systems. Domo integrates with SQL databases such as MySQL and PostgreSQL and NoSQL databases such as MongoDB. Domo also comes with connectors to Cloud data warehouses such as Amazon Redshift, Amazon Aurora, and Google BigQuery. Domo users can use the Domo Workbench connector to connect to non-supported sources.
Domo’s MySQL connector can be found by clicking “Database” from the toolbar at the top of the Data Center. It requires you to provide details such as the MySQL hostname, database name, port number, and MySQL username and password. The connector supports TLS for data security if your server supports TLS. After a successful connection, Domo users can create SQL queries to pull MySQL data for analysis and visualization.
2. Visualizations
Domo has over 150 chart types and over 7,000 custom maps that you can use to make sense of your MySQL data. Examples include trellis charts, period-over-period charts, data science charts, tables, and maps. Domo users can customize the visualizations to suit their needs. They can also create custom visualizations using simple drag-and-drop tools.
3. Natural Language Queries
Domo supports natural language queries, allowing you to ask questions about your data in natural language and get immediate answers with text bots. It supports chat-style data exploration to enable users to answer their questions faster by typing questions in their own words.
4. Embedded Analytics
Domo has an embedded analytics feature called Domo Everywhere to help users embed analytics into their products. Users can use iframes for quick embedding and JavaScript to control filters and context. The embedded content can be shared publicly or privately using row-level governance to regulate what users can see. It can also be white-labeled to meet the desired branding.
5. Alerts/Anomaly Detection
Domo users can configure alerts to monitor exceptions that occur in their business or be updated when key changes happen to their data. Users can create scheduled alerts to be notified at certain times, or threshold-based alerts to be notified when their data reaches thresholds that need your action or attention. You can receive the alert notifications via email, web, or any mobile device.
6. Customer Support
Domo has a knowledge base with written articles to help you learn how to use the BI platform. You can type your question within the knowledge base and Domo will return article suggestions that can answer you after hitting the return key.
It has a community forum where you can post your questions and get answers from other Domo users. You can also create a support case by filling out a form on its official website and its support team will get back to you.
7. Pricing
Domo uses credit-based pricing to help you start small and scale with control. It has four pricing plans, Free Forever, Standard, Enterprise, and Business Critical.
The Free Forever plan helps you to try out the Domo platform. It is free and you get 300 credits/month. The Standard plan allows you to start with 300 free credits and add credits as you need. It costs $300/month. The Enterprise plan is fit for companies with higher data volumes and uses custom-based pricing. The Business Critical plan is fit for organizations that need additional security layers and its price is custom-based.
Benefits of Domo
Domo users enjoy the following benefits:
- Integrates with MySQL
Domo users can easily connect to MySQL and pull data for analysis and visualization without installing any driver.
2. Customizable visualizations
Domo users can edit visualizations after adding them to their worksheets. They can also create custom visualizations using simple drag-and-drop tools.
3. Fit for non-technical users
Domo has Natural Language Processing capabilities, allowing users to ask questions about their data in their own words and get immediate answers.
Limitations of Domo
Domo has the following limitations:
- Limited integrations
Domo doesn’t have connectors to some data sources. Users must depend on the Domo Workbench connector to pull data from unsupported sources. This may require technical knowledge.
2. Lacks Native Support for Machine Learning
Domo doesn’t have built-in machine learning capabilities. It instead depends on third parties such as Amazon Sagemaker to help users build machine learning models from their data.
3. Limited data support
Domo works well with structured data, but it doesn’t have strong support for unstructured data like other BI tools.
Looker
Looker is a cloud-based BI tool with a MySQL connector that enables you to access data from MySQL databases within Looker Studio. You can access the connector by clicking “Create” and then “Data Source” within Looker Studio. Note that a Looker Studio data source can connect to a single MySQL database table. Looker’s MySQL connector supports two connection methods: Basic using hostname/IP address and JDBC URL using a JDBC URL. In both methods, user authentication is done via the MySQL username and password. You can also enable TLS/SSL for secure (encrypted) connection to MySQL. After a successful connection, Looker will pull out the list of tables in your target database. You can select a table or create a custom SQL query to pull data from the table of choice.
Looker Features
Looker has the following key features:
- Integrations
Looker comes with connectors to SQL-based databases such as MySQL and cloud data warehouses such as Snowflake and Google BigQuery. However, it lacks connectors to NoSQL data sources. Looker requires users to move the data into a relational structure for it to query against.
Looker’s MySQL connector lets you connect to MySQL using the hostname/IP address or by providing a JDBC URL specifying the details of your MySQL database. Authentication is done using MySQL username and password. Looker users can enable SSL during the connection for data security. Once connected to MySQL, you can select a table or create a custom SQL query to pull data from MySQL.
2. Visualizations
Looker provides you with various visualizations to present your MySQL data. Examples include gauge, radar, bar, and area charts. You can customize the visualizations to achieve your desired look and feel.
3. Analytics
Looker offers Looker Blocks which are pre-built data models for common data sources and analytical patterns. They help Looker users analyze their data quickly by reusing the work done by others instead of starting from scratch. You can customize the blocks to get what you desire.
4. Embedded Analytics
Looker has an embedded analytics solution called Looker Embedded to enable users to embed their dashboards and analytical capabilities into external products. You can generate an iframe and use it to embed content in HTML-formatted web pages, applications, and portals.
5. Alerts/Anomaly Detection
Looker allows you to configure alerts to be notified when your query results meet certain conditions. You can set the frequency with which Looker will check your data for the alert condition. Looker can notify you via email or Slack.
6. Customer Support
Looker users can get help from Looker Studio’s help page. It features help topics that can help you learn more about the BI tool. The help page has a search bar where you can type your question and get article suggestions that can help you.
You can also post your question in its community forum and get answers from other Looker users.
7. Pricing
Looker’s pricing plans are divided into two: platform pricing and user pricing. Platform pricing is the cost of running a Looker (Google Cloud Core) instance while user pricing is the cost of licensing users to access Looker.
There are three Platform pricing plans namely Standard, Enterprise, and Embed and they have a custom-based pricing approach. There are also three editions for Looker User pricing namely Developer User, Standard User, and Viewer User, and their pricing is custom-based.
Benefits of Looker
Lookers gives its users the following benefits:
- Easy integration with MySQL
Looker users can easily connect to MySQL and pull their data for analysis and visualization. Looker doesn’t require them to install any driver or move their data.
2. Data encryption
Looker users can enable SSL while connecting to MySQL for a secure (encrypted connection. This is good for data security.
3. Customizable Visualizations
Looker users can customize their visualizations to get the desired appearance.
4. Multi-Cloud Friendly
Looker is a multi-cloud-friendly BI tool, giving users flexibility in choosing where to deploy it and the underlying databases.
Limitations of Looker
Looker has the following limitations:
- Lacks connectors to NoSQL data sources
Looker doesn’t have connectors to NoSQL data sources. Users must use complex ETL steps to move the data into a relational structure for Looker to query against.
2. May require a learning curve
Looker requires users to learn LookML, its proprietary, markup language to perform some tasks on the platform. This may require a learning curve.
3. Limited US customer support
The acquisition of Looker by Google has seen the BI tool go through many changes, including scaling down its US customer support team. The software has also confused users in its naming (Looker Studio).
Final Thoughts
MySQL is an open-source, relational database management system. Its wide usage has given rise to many MySQL reporting tools to help users understand their data. Thus, choosing the best MySQL reporting tool for your team can be challenging.
Tableau, Knowi, Power BI, Domo, and Looker are some of the best MySQL reporting tools you can consider for your team.
Tableau is a powerful BI tool for data analysis and visualization. Its MySQL connector requires you to download a driver from Tableau’s official website and install it for the two platforms to communicate. Authentication is done using MySQL username and password.
Knowi is an all-in-one data analytics platform that enables data discovery, querying, aggregation, visualization, and reporting automation from MySQL. It supports two ways of connecting to MySQL: Directly from its UI or using its Cloud9Agent to pull data into your network. You can choose between direct and non-direct execution strategies. In direct execution, queries are run directly against mySQL without storage in between. In non-direct execution, query results are stored in Knowi’s Elastic Store for benefits such as reduced load on the database and long-running queries.
Power BI is a BI tool created by Microsoft and it supports integration with MySQL. It requires downloading and installing the Oracle MySQL Connector/NET from MySQL’s official website. The connector requires you to provide the server and the database name and MySQL username and password. It also lets you choose between encrypted and unencrypted connection to MySQL.
Domo is a cloud-based business intelligence tool that comes with a MySQL connector. The connector requires you to provide details such as the server and database name, port number, and MySQL username and password. You specify the data you want by creating SQL queries.
Looker is a cloud-based BI tool with a MySQL connector to enable you to access your MySQL database within Looker Studio. You can access MySQL using a hostname/IP address or a JDBC URL. Looker authenticates users using MySQL username and password. You can enable SSL/TLS for a secure (encrypted) connection to MySQL.
