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The Mistake that Teradata and Snowflake Make



Why would Teradata charge a customer $20,000,000.00 to buy an on-premises Teradata system, then tack on another $2,000,000.00 for professional services, then charge over six figures for education, and then provide a free query tool for everyone to use?


Teradata has always been the most expensive database on the market, and whenever customers beg for a discount, they hear, "Sorry, but it is what the market will bear."


Unfortunately, some customers can't afford to eat because their cupboards are bare!


Is it possible that Teradata is giving away to show their appreciation for the customer? I did recently see a Teradata salesman on a cold day with his hands in his own pockets, so it is possible, but the real reason is Teradata wants users to submit query after query.


If nobody ate at home and everyone went out to eat every night, the streets would be so crowded that they too would need a Workload Manager.

However, if you get a real query tool, you can reduce your queries to Teradata and every other system by 90%. Families who buy groceries and cook at home can save 90% on spending versus going to a restaurant.


Teradata has produced one of the greatest database platforms of our time and was the pioneer in parallel processing. The computing world owes them a debt of gratitude, but unfortunately, many customers just owe them a debt. However, their software query tools are nothing more than a scam to lock customers into over-querying their platform. With Teradata query tools, customers have little to no chance to migrate data off of Teradata or perform federated queries with other systems. You will need a Teradata upgrade or professional services to solve the traffic problems.


Like Teradata, Snowflake has revolutionized the computing industry. Snowflake separates the two things that scale on the AWS, Azure, and Google Clouds: CPU and storage. What a clever concept! Snowflake can scale the data warehouse up or down in an instant, a term named elasticity, providing customers enormous flexibility. Another incredibly intelligent move is that customers can purchase data from Snowflake from partners that add weather, geography, or criminal data.

And Snowflake charges customers per query, allowing a company to try a Snowflake data warehouse easily and inexpensively. Snowflake's query browser on their website is ingenious because customers don't have to load software on their PC or laptop to query Snowflake. Users merely log in to the Snowflake website and can immediately query.


However, Snowflake users can't slice and dice answer sets, join tables or views with other on-premises or cloud platforms, or migrate data to another system. Users have no chance of doing a federated query or integrating data with the tens of other database platforms in their enterprise. Anyone using the Snowflake browser to query is going into battle unarmed.


The biggest mistake any company can make is to use Teradata SQL Assistant or any free query tool from any database vendor. The good news is that Teradata has officially retired SQL Assistant. However, you can get SQL Assistant 2.0 now under the name Teradata Studio if your IT strategy is "No pain, no gain."


When people purchase the Nexus Query Chameleon from me, their database vendor begins to hyperventilate. Your company can now run queries, get the underlying data, and then slice and dice the results a hundred times without running another query.


With Nexus, users can query data from expensive platforms like Teradata, cloud systems like Snowflake, and free systems like MySQL and instantly move and integrate data for Excel, Tableau, PowerBI, and Microsoft Access. Nexus doesn't care where your data resides. Nexus saves customers time and money on every system.


Users can also share result sets with their peers, pivot the data, put it to an Excel-like worksheet and manipulate it inside Nexus, and run the same analytics they used to have to query on Teradata and Snowflake inside the Nexus for free. Your PC has a CPU and memory, so why not let Nexus perform the analytics on a data set instead of running another query on Snowflake or Teradata?


If you needed 50 analytics on a data set, you would need to write and execute 50 queries on Teradata or Snowflake. If you have Nexus, you would need to run one query and slice and dice the answer set 50 times. Imagine cutting down the traffic and the costs on your current databases by 50 times.


The Nexus also allows users to query all databases in the enterprise with a single tool. Nexus even allows users to see tables and views visually, and Nexus writes the SQL for the user. Nexus can join data across 20 different systems, allowing users to slice and dice the results. And anyone who needs to move data from another system into their sandbox can move tables or answer sets from 20 different systems with a point-and-click of the mouse.


Nexus can instantly and automatically migrate a single table or thousands of tables from every combination of 20 different systems.


Yes, Nexus version 17 can migrate from every combination between all systems below as the source or the target. Do you know how nice that is for users to be able to migrate tables directly to Microsoft Access or join Access and Excel with database tables?


• MySQL

• Excel

• Microsoft Access

• Snowflake

• Redshift

• Synapse

• BigQuery

• Teradata

• Oracle

• SQL Server

• DB2

• Hadoop

• MapR

• Greenplum

• Postgres

• Vertica

• Netezza

• SAP HANA

• Yellowbrick • SQLite

Your company and users will encounter hundreds of different database platforms over the upcoming years, but you will only need one query tool for the rest of your life. Don't let Teradata or Snowflake lock you into free. The costs are hidden but enormous in time wasted, traffic issues, and system costs.


In the long run, Teradata and Snowflake are making the same mistake by providing a brilliant database engine and free query tools that serve their interests.


Check out the picture below and see the many options Nexus brings to the table. Notice all of the systems in the systems tree on the left, notice the option of dark mode, and see the MIGRATE DATA button and the Super Join Builder button to have Nexus write the SQL for you. Also, notice the option of book mode, which puts the answer set to the right of the query window. Contact me for a one-hour demo, and you will free your corporation from any dept to any database vendor. Take back control and take advantage of all the beautiful database platforms you can utilize on-premises or in the cloud.



You can download a free trial of Nexus at CoffingDW.com. You can also see some of the great features of Nexus right here.


Look at the videos on our website at CoffingDW.com or NexusDataServer.com.



It is never too early to teach your children about data. Do what this family does below and read them a story of the greatest data scientist ever!






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