Fully Covered Since 2020

“An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.”

– Benjamin Franklin, 1735

Benjamin Franklin wrote those words about fighting fires in Philadelphia. In 1752, he co-founded the Philadelphia Contributionship, the oldest property insurance company in America still in business. Franklin knew that the best policy is the one you put in place before you need it.

One of America’s largest insurance and financial services companies took his advice. It started with Nexus Query Chameleon in 2020, grew to 300 licenses, and renewed with a two-year contract. Its customers know the company is on their side, and for six years, Nexus has been on theirs.

It has also become our most successful partnership, built on their requests and our delivery of world-class features. When an insurer renews, you know the coverage is good, especially when they save some Benjamins.

Six Databases, Three Clouds, One Migration

“I will either find a way or make one.”

– Attributed to Hannibal

In 218 BC, Hannibal marched an army and a herd of war elephants over the Alps. Nobody thought it could be done. This insurer faced its own Alps: moving its data off Teradata, Netezza, DB2, Oracle, Sybase, and SQL Server, and onto Snowflake, Databricks, and Redshift.

Six source systems and three targets meant nine platforms, each with its own SQL, data types, and load utilities. Nexus found the way, and when there wasn’t one, it made one. Hannibal needed elephants. This insurer just needed Nexus—and that’s one migration they’ll never forget.

Three Servers and a Team of Twelve

“Be quick, but don’t hurry.”

– John Wooden

John Wooden coached UCLA to 10 NCAA basketball championships in 12 years, including seven in a row. He won with a roster of about a dozen players, and he never let them confuse speed with panic.

This migration had a roster of 12 employees and three Nexus Servers. The servers moved the data straight from each source to each target, so no row ever squeezed through someone’s PC. The team stayed quick without hurrying, because the Nexus Servers did the heavy lifting. Call it a full-court press with three big men in the paint.

Fifteen Connections, One Window

“Mr. Watson, come here, I want to see you.”

– Alexander Graham Bell, March 10, 1876

Those were the first words ever spoken over a telephone. Alexander Graham Bell had received his patent just three days earlier, and he used his first call to reach one person in the next room.

Some users at this insurer have 15 different database connections. In Nexus, all of them sit in one tree, in separate query windows, ready to query, join, or receive data. Bell needed a line for every call. Nexus users get every line in one place, and nobody ever gets a busy signal.

Set Up Once, Shared with Everyone

“He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me.”

– Thomas Jefferson, 1813

Thomas Jefferson wrote the Declaration of Independence and founded the University of Virginia, and he believed good ideas should be shared. This insurer agreed. With 15 connections per user and 300 users, setting up every connection by hand would have taken forever.

So they asked us for a better way, and we built it. One person creates all of the Nexus connections and saves them to a file. Everyone else loads Nexus, and the connections are already there. Each user only fills in their own username and password. One user lights the candle, 300 users see the light, and every password stays in the dark.

Drag, Drop and Done

“Nothing is particularly hard if you divide it into small jobs.”

– Henry Ford, 1922

In 1913, Henry Ford’s moving assembly line cut the time to build a Model T chassis from more than 12 hours to about an hour and a half. He did it by breaking one big job into many small ones.

Nexus does the same for moving data. Users love that they can take any result set, drag it onto any system in the tree, and drop it. Nexus creates the table and moves the data with high-speed utilities. One drag, and the assembly line runs itself. Any color you want, as long as it’s a table.

Built Around Every Request

“There is only one boss. The customer. And he can fire everybody in the company from the chairman on down, simply by spending his money somewhere else.”

– Sam Walton

Sam Walton opened his first Walmart in 1962 and built it into the largest retailer in the world by listening to his customers. We take the same approach. This insurer has asked for a lot over the years, and we have customized Nexus around their every request.

Their requests made Nexus better for every customer we have. The shared connection file is just one example. When your customer is the boss, every feature request is a job review, and this one keeps giving us glowing marks.

Here is what else is in the policy.

Super Join Builder: Federation Across All Systems

“Union gives strength.”

– Aesop, The Bundle of Sticks

Aesop told the story of a father who handed his sons a bundle of sticks. None of them could break the bundle, but each stick snapped easily on its own. Aesop has been teaching that lesson for about 2,500 years.

The Super Join Builder bundles tables from Snowflake, Databricks, Redshift, Teradata, and more into one query. Check the columns you want, and Nexus writes the SQL, moves the data to a hub, and joins it there. Pick a different hub, and Nexus rewrites the SQL. One table snaps. A Nexus bundle holds, and that’s no fable!

Cloud Drop

“Poyekhali!”

– Yuri Gagarin, April 12, 1961

“Poyekhali” means “Let’s go!” Yuri Gagarin said it as his rocket left the launch pad, and 108 minutes later, he had become the first human to orbit the Earth.

Cloud Drop gives your data the same launch. Drag any query result into AWS, Azure, Google Cloud, or local storage, and it lands as a CSV, JSON, Parquet, Excel, or text file. Nexus shows cloud buckets like databases and files like tables, so users can query them and join them to any system. Let’s go, and your data reaches orbit before lunch.

GitHub Integration

“To improve is to change; to be perfect is to change often.”

– Winston Churchill, 1925

Winston Churchill was a prime minister, a soldier, and a painter, and in 1953, he won the Nobel Prize in Literature. He also rewrote his speeches over and over until every word was right.

GitHub Integration lets your team change often without losing anything. Push, pull, and manage SQL files directly between Nexus and GitHub, and every version is saved. Click a .sql file in the repo, and it opens as a query, ready to run on any system. Churchill would have loved it: your SQL can change as often as it likes, and every draft is a finest hour.

Federated Notebooks

“A man who dares to waste one hour of time has not discovered the value of life.”

– Charles Darwin, 1836

Charles Darwin filled notebook after notebook during his five years aboard HMS Beagle. Those notes became the foundation for On the Origin of Species.

Federated Notebooks let analysts keep the same kind of record. Mix SQL, Python, Markdown, and more in one connected workflow. One cell queries Snowflake, the next queries Oracle, and Python brings the results together. It’s the evolution of analysis, and only the fittest queries survive.

BIcandy: Instant Dashboards and Beautiful Maps

“Great things are not done by impulse, but by a series of small things brought together.”

– Vincent van Gogh, 1882

Vincent van Gogh wrote that line to his brother Theo. Seven years later, he painted The Starry Night, one small brushstroke at a time.

BIcandy brings the small things together for you. Run a query that returns a date and an amount, and Nexus builds the dashboard: totals by year, month, weekday, and hour, plus maps where the size of each circle shows the amount in each city. Your data becomes a starry night, and you never have to lend anyone an ear.

More Than 100 Themes

“Color is my day-long obsession, joy and torment.”

– Claude Monet

Claude Monet painted around 250 versions of the water lilies in his garden at Giverny, often in different light at different hours of the day.

Nexus gives you more than 100 themes, from Coffee and Northern Lights to Pittsburgh Black and Gold. It is also the only query tool that lets you schedule your themes, so your screen can change with the light the way Monet’s canvases did. Your obsession with color finally pays off, with none of the torment, and it’s guaranteed to make a positive Impressionism.

Why Nexus Connects Everywhere

“He can run, but he can’t hide.”

– Joe Louis, 1946

Joe Louis held the heavyweight title from 1937 to 1949 and defended it 25 times. He said those words before his 1946 rematch with Billy Conn, and then he knocked Conn out in the eighth round.

Most vendor query tools only work on their own system: Snowsight on Snowflake, BigQuery Studio on BigQuery, and the Databricks SQL Editor on Databricks. Nexus works equally well on every system it connects to. Microsoft OEM’d Nexus from 2009 to 2012 and gave it to its customers, and one of America’s largest insurers moved nine platforms’ worth of data with it. Your data can run to any system, but it can’t hide from Nexus.

See Where Nexus Is Going

“I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been.”

– Wayne Gretzky

Wayne Gretzky scored 894 goals in the NHL regular season, a record that stood for more than two decades. He did it by getting to the right place before everyone else.

This insurer skated to Nexus in 2020 and has been ahead of the play ever since. Ask for a 30-minute demo, and we’ll run Nexus on your own systems with the queries your team runs every day. If you’d rather try it yourself, ask for a free trial. Like a good partner, Nexus will be on your side.

Email Tom Coffing at Tom.Coffing@CoffingDW.com and put “Nexus demo” or “Nexus trial” in the subject line.

Nexus Query Chameleon: The Intersection of All Data.