FlexQuery: 5 Benefits for BI Leaders and Data Product Builders

If you follow GoodData or any of our team members on social media, then you may have seen a flutter of activity around something called FlexQuery this week. But if you’re in a role that bridges both business and technical domains, the relevance of this to your day-to-day may not be entirely clear. Fear not though, as this article aims to break it down for you!

We all know that the proliferation of data sources and escalating volumes pose significant challenges and there are seemingly dozens of tools out there that claim to solve them. However, to do so requires evaluation time, budgeting, RFIs, vendor management, procurement teams, and so on.

Fortunately, FlexQuery now offers the benefit of not only enhancing your data management capabilities but also unlocking new potential — like AI, ML, direct data feeds, live data streaming, caching and controls, and much more. As such, if you’re in the market for a new analytics solution or you are already a GoodData customer, you need look no further.

So, to save you time and to avoid confusion read on for the top 5 benefits of FlexQuery that you’ll find the most valuable.

1. Semantic and metrics layer for data governance

Our semantic and metrics layer is the secret sauce of FlexQuery. Define once, reuse an infinite number of times in our dashboards, in Python and React applications, and even in competitor products — all thanks to our headless metrics engine. FlexQuery connects your data work to all of your downstream uses; be that BI, application development, or machine learning.

2. Reduced costs through optimized data processing

FlexQuery is built on Apache Arrow, which we’ve taken full advantage of to build a series of caches to improve query performance and reduce load — and therefore cost — on data warehouses or data lakes. We store full and partial query result sets for reuse at runtime, bound of course by your security and tenancy requirements. We also give you the control to pre-cache data at the table, model, visualization, or dashboard level to ensure great performance for your most critical assets.

3. Empower your teams to leverage open-source technologies

At its heart, FlexQuery is a composable data service layer. This means that you can write pluggable FlexQuery modules to perform nearly any data-related task you can think of. Whether it’s adding a new data source, manipulating data in pandas data frames, or applying complex, AI-driven transformations, FlexQuery lets you build the tools you need to deliver for your end users.

4. Avoid data integration challenges with data federation

Data federation at the BI layer is inevitable. Thanks to FlexQuery, you can now combine data from any number of systems, pre-aggregated in memory or on the fly at runtime. This gives you supreme control over where and when computation occurs to maximize performance and minimize costs while letting your analytics engineers combine data to deliver solutions quickly.

5. Avoid even more data integration challenges with data materialization

FlexQuery lets you pre-compute and materialize data into GoodData as you see fit. You can select individual tables or entire models for materialization, or materialize SQL result sets. We give you the full suite of SQL capabilities to perform joins, calculations, logical operations, and transformations and use the resulting data just as you would any other table in your model.

In summary, GoodData's FlexQuery provides more than just a tool, but a strategic edge for BI leaders and data product builders alike as a holistic solution to modern data management. Embracing FlexQuery, which is available for all GoodData customers, can drive efficiency, cost savings, and innovation as organizations move closer to their data-driven objectives.

To learn more about FlexQuery, its benefits, and the underlying technology head here. Alternatively, request a demo and we’ll show you how it all works.