Improved test data validation and latency has revealed client dependencies that still need refinement
What is our primary use case?
My main use case for Denodo is jobs which I require for test data, so that is one place where Denodo has come in. I think we have to write SQL queries, and there are cases where there are AWS Redshift databases. There is a difference in query results that we have to validate between legacy and modern systems, which is one of the use cases. Then when we test using Rest Assured or using Postman, there is a layer of Denodo that comes into play.
I can tell you about a specific example where Denodo made a difference in one of my test data or validation projects. We had a case in one of the projects where we had a large number of APIs that were sequentially connected with each other. What exactly was happening there was that there was a UI developed, then there was this API, and several AWS services which we were working with together. Denodo came into the picture because there were some masking and security-related customer emails on local QA environments. So there was a use case of real data where we could not really scrub the database. Denodo had an implementation there.
What is most valuable?
The best features Denodo offers in my experience include a very solid compatibility with AWS and AWS Athena. Denodo also works with EC2 auto-scaling groups, so the scalability aspects are excellent. Denodo is installable via AWS Marketplace directly, and that installation part is seamless.
Denodo has positively impacted my organization, and I have noticed changes since its implementation. The performance of our application has increased significantly. Earlier, we used to have several outages or slowness that users reported, but now those things do not happen.
I can share specific outcomes or metrics. Latency was one of the metrics being tracked, and we were at double nines sort of accuracy in latency. The latency slowed down by a factor of about ten altogether, which was a key metric observed after Denodo was implemented.
What needs improvement?
Denodo can be improved in some areas. We faced some issues with respect to Java client dependencies and had significant hassle with version management. Improving version management is something Denodo can work on.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been using Denodo for close to two years, on and off in two different organizations.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
Denodo is totally stable in my experience.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
The scalability of Denodo specifically helped my team or projects in situations where it made a big difference. We had one application deployed on a multi-continent system where several different countries used the application at the same time. The application was taking performance hits and slowing down at times. Denodo's scalability comes into play specifically when there is data transfer.
Denodo's scalability is good. It scales well, and I scaled it across two continents and four countries with very few issues.
How are customer service and support?
I have not interacted with customer support.
How would you rate customer service and support?
How was the initial setup?
The company did purchase Denodo through the AWS Marketplace, although not me personally.
What about the implementation team?
My experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing is that licenses were bought at an aggregate level from a vertical, which had significant costs. However, I am not sure about the specific pricing and setup cost, as these were centrally handled.
What was our ROI?
I have seen a return on investment, which showed up in improved customer satisfaction scores. It was not exactly about money or time saving, but the customer scores did improve.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
I think Denodo was the top choice, and my organization did not evaluate other options before choosing it.
What other advice do I have?
On a scale of one to ten, I would rate Denodo a seven. I gave it a seven because it was not held back or anything. We had a very limited use case as QEs, and we used it as a supporting layer or an intermediate layer. It was more useful towards teams that had dedicated performance reduction goals that we did not have, so it was all good to me.
My advice for others looking into using Denodo is that if you have multi-country applications, latency, and slowness and are looking to optimize queries for better performance at a backend layer, especially with many APIs or microservices, Denodo is the solution to choose.
I have no additional thoughts about Denodo before we wrap up as I think I have shared everything. I would rate Denodo a seven out of ten.
Which deployment model are you using for this solution?
Private Cloud
If public cloud, private cloud, or hybrid cloud, which cloud provider do you use?
Amazon Web Services (AWS)
Good product to use but needs improvement in some areas
What do you like best about the product?
1) High range of sources and targets are supported.
2) It makes data analysis so simple as you could do a lot with only using SQL.
3) Good range of pre-defined functions.
What do you dislike about the product?
1) GUIs for Monitor and scheduling applications need a revamp.
2) Formatting of VQLs in Virtual Data port needs to be looked upon. VQLs format in a single line in spite of user forming a beautifully format query.
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
Data Analysis:
I have been using Denodo to read data from a variety of sources like Enterprise Datawarehouse, Cloud services and third party APIs. Denodo eliminates the need for lengthy ETL processes and makes analysis very easy.
Easy solution build:
Even when a solution needs to be built using all these sources, we could leverage Denodo to be used as a source and process it in a different framework.
Time-saving:
By bringing all sources to one place, Denodo helps ion reducing development time by a huge percentage. ETL needs proper procedures to be setup and company regulations mean it would take months to move data. Using a data virtualization tool reduces that time to minuites.
Good tool but the interface is not user-friendly
What do you like best about the product?
The communication with many other systems e.g. Snowflake
What do you dislike about the product?
The interface can be better and more intuitive
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
We provide views for other departments
Recommendations to others considering the product:
No
It is good tool when we need abstraction of business logic layer.
What do you like best about the product?
➦Performance of tool.
➦The caching feature is useful but for that the documentation is complex.
➦Connecting to wide variety of databases are compatible and easy to use.
➦Handling API endpoints are easy as compare to other tools.
What do you dislike about the product?
➦Complex concept like scheduler and caching should have good simpler documentation.
➦Administration training material is somewhat similar, but there are different exam quetions.
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
Hiding the underlying business logic while serving multiple vendors.
A new learning in data virtualization
What do you like best about the product?
As a test analyst, it’s a new learning in the journey of testing data virtualization , governance and accesses specially when working on a project which needs to be GDPR complaint.
What do you dislike about the product?
Certain configuration and integration with on premises takes longer time.
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
Helps in dealing with larger set of data from anywhere .
Good Tool for Data Discovery
What do you like best about the product?
Easy to play with data, create views, and different formals of data like RDBMS sources as well as flat files, xml , json and web services.
What do you dislike about the product?
Need to add more functionalities to make it a more powerful tool to be used as a Data Governance tool.
* Portal to defines roles and access, then Data stewards will just love the tool.
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
1. Used to provide End to End Enterprise Data Lineage
2. Create a Business Glossary
3. Create a Data Catalog
4. Used by Analysed for Data Discovery
5. Tagging Data attributes with tags such as Personal Information, Metadata fields etc
Recommendations to others considering the product:
Good Tool, Has limited capabilities for Data Governance, Can be also used with limited capabilities for MDM platform
My feed back on Denodo
What do you like best about the product?
integration between application, web services, security of objects.
What do you dislike about the product?
Still denodo using Derby DB internally, no query support for Derby from external application. Denodo monitoring writing logs to any other RDBMS.
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
Security and Denodo Data catalog gives UI to metadata exposure to users and relationship between objects using associations.
Recommendations to others considering the product:
1. Denodo doesn’t supports Athena for Cache.
2. No clustering support. We have built two nodes in production with ELB, we need to sync code in two servers separately.
3. Denodo 7 is on Derby DB, which is not good for performance and no parallel commit. Our current production server replication to new server takes 4 hours for import.
4. No support for External db where we can keep Denodo metadata some Relational database. I come to know that in Denodo 8, we will get this future.
5. Denodo Monitoring logs writing to db is having issues, support team is working on this for 2 months didn’t get resolution on this. Denodo Monitoring tools are not up to the mark.
My poc on Denodo
What do you like best about the product?
Caching is the best feature I think makes denodo stand out
What do you dislike about the product?
No inmemory caching, this would have made denodo way more faster
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
Connect to various data warehouses and end applications to build a single data model
Denodo - used by my company for regular reporting
What do you like best about the product?
It does not allow you to make an error - you are not allowed to save a sql which does not make sense;
views and vql options- you can write code as well as 'build' it via visualisation
What do you dislike about the product?
it is suggested to creat many simple views. sometimes when there are multiple views it is hard to find where improvement or adjustment to your 'code' should be made
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
regular reporting to clients on their product performance; the reports need to be outomated - easy XML extraction
Recommendations to others considering the product:
allow time for implementation Denodo - do not rush without adjusting it to the business need
Solid product for large enterprises
What do you like best about the product?
What I like most about denodo is the ability to scale fast. Because everything is a view the ability to create many abstraction layers across many disparate data source becomes very easy appose to other semantic layer development tools.
What do you dislike about the product?
So far I have found the UI for the vdp admin tools not the best layout and navigating has been a little challenging compared to other dbms tools. That being said we are on version 7 and version 8 from a demonstration we had with the vendors have been greatly enhanced from a UX/UI perspective.
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
We have a very large enterprise and are blending data across the enterprise. What denodo has helped us achieve is both federated and non federated data with the same reusable data structures. We accomplish this buy creating one off final interface for specific applications. This greatly reduces development time.
Recommendations to others considering the product:
A big pro of Denodo is easy of sharing of data across the enterprise. A big downside of denodo is it not a replacement for a COTS or Custom ETL tool. It can handle low level data cleansing and wrangling pretty well but does not perform heavy ETL well. That being said if most of your data reporting needs are real time pulls from data sources with data in the format-ish you want you will be fine.
