A Holding Period of Forever

“Our favorite holding period is forever.”

– Warren Buffett, 1988

One of the nation’s largest brokerage firms, the pioneer that brought discount investing to everyday Americans, made an investment in 2006. It wasn’t a stock. It was a Universal License for Nexus Query Chameleon, and it has paid dividends ever since.

Today, 15,000 users at the firm run Nexus. Their customers are told to talk to Chuck. Their analysts talk to Nexus, and Nexus talks back in every dialect of SQL.

Buy the Haystack

“Don’t look for the needle in the haystack. Just buy the haystack!”

– John C. Bogle

Most companies buy query tool licenses one needle at a time: a seat here, a seat there, and a true-up at the end of the year. This firm bought the haystack. Its Nexus Universal License covers every user for one price. That’s an index fund for query tools.

There’s no seat counting and no waiting for a license to free up. When a new analyst joins, Nexus is ready on day one. In this portfolio, every user is fully vested.

Twenty Years of Compound Interest

“The big money is not in the buying and selling, but in the waiting.”

– Charlie Munger

Twenty years is a long time to hold anything on Wall Street. Markets crashed and recovered, technology changed overnight, and query tools came and went. This firm held Nexus through all of it. That’s a blue-chip relationship.

The return on that patience keeps compounding. Nexus keeps getting better, and the firm’s 15,000 users keep cashing in.

They Sold Teradata, Bought BigQuery and Held Nexus

“The four most dangerous words in investing are: ‘This time it’s different.’”

– Sir John Templeton

This time, it really was different. The firm was a Teradata shop for years, and then it sold its Teradata position and bought into Google BigQuery. When a company changes data warehouses, the tools usually get traded away too. That’s a lot of churn for one portfolio.

But the firm kept Nexus. The warehouse changed, the query tool didn’t, and 15,000 users never had to learn a new one. Talk about a smooth market transition.

Know the Bytes Before You Bite

“Beware of little expenses; a small leak will sink a great ship.”

– Benjamin Franklin

In BigQuery, on-demand queries are billed by the bytes they process, so one careless SELECT * can spring a very expensive leak. Nexus shows how many bytes a BigQuery query will process before you run it. Now every user can check the price tag before making the trade.

Trim the columns, add a WHERE clause, and watch the number drop before a single byte is billed. For a firm that built its name on lower costs, Nexus brings discount brokerage to the cloud bill.

Universal Search Across All Systems

“Know what you own, and know why you own it.”

– Peter Lynch

Big firms own data on many systems, and Nexus helps them know what they own. It queries BigQuery, Teradata, Oracle, SQL Server, Snowflake, Databricks and more from one window. That’s a diversified portfolio with a single statement.

The Cache Tree searches every connected system at once for a table or column name, so users find what they own in seconds. Nobody has to audit the whole portfolio to find one holding.

Here are the rest of the assets in the Nexus portfolio.

Migrate Between All Systems

“Don’t gamble; take all your savings and buy some good stock and hold it till it goes up, then sell it. If it don’t go up, don’t buy it.”

– Will Rogers

Moving data shouldn’t be a gamble either. Check the tables, pick a target, and click Execute. Nexus builds the target tables, pairs the source vendor’s export utility with the target vendor’s load utility, and moves the data at full speed. It’s the safest trade on the floor.

Teradata to BigQuery, Oracle to Snowflake, SQL Server to Databricks: Nexus migrates between every system it connects to. Your data goes up to the cloud, and nobody has to bet the farm.

Super Join Builder: Federation Across All Systems

“Diversification is the only free lunch.”

– Harry Markowitz

The Super Join Builder is the ultimate diversified portfolio. Pick tables from BigQuery, Teradata, Snowflake, Databricks, and more, check the columns you want, and Nexus writes the SQL, moves the data to a hub, and joins it there. It spreads the work and collects the returns.

Want a different hub? Pick your PC or a Nexus Server, and Nexus rewrites the SQL for you. Federation across every system, and lunch is on the house.

The Nexus Server

“Put all your eggs in one basket, and then watch that basket.”

– Andrew Carnegie, 1885

The Nexus Server is the one basket worth watching. When a migration runs from a desktop, every row squeezes through the user’s PC. The Nexus Server moves the data straight from source to target while the PC only sends the instructions. No more scrambled eggs.

It also speeds up federated queries, and it stores flat files cheaply so users can query them like tables. Every egg lands in the right basket, and nothing cracks under pressure.

Cloud Drop

“We always overestimate the change that will occur in the next two years and underestimate the change that will occur in the next ten.”

– Bill Gates, The Road Ahead

In 2006, few people guessed how much of their data would end up in the cloud. Cloud Drop is built for that world. Drag any query result into AWS, Azure, Google Cloud, or local storage, and it lands as a CSV, JSON, Parquet, Excel, or text file. The road ahead runs straight through the cloud.

Nexus shows cloud buckets like databases and files like tables, so users can query a file in Google Cloud Storage and join it to BigQuery. Your data finally becomes a liquid asset.

GitHub Integration

“Don’t look back. Something might be gaining on you.”

– Satchel Paige, 1953

With GitHub, you can look back all you want, because nothing is gaining on your SQL. Push, pull and manage SQL files directly between Nexus and GitHub, and every version is saved. Your queries finally have an audit trail even a compliance officer would love.

Click a .sql file in the repo, and it opens as a query, ready to run on any system. With 15,000 users sharing SQL, every query comes off the mound throwing strikes.

Federated Notebooks

“What I cannot create, I do not understand.”

– Richard Feynman, 1988

Federated Notebooks let analysts create and understand in the same place. Mix SQL, Python, Markdown and more into one connected workflow. One cell queries BigQuery, the next queries Oracle, and Python brings the results together. It’s a notebook with a Nobel-worthy idea.

Analysts write down their reasoning right next to their code, so the next person understands the why as well as the what. That’s research worth investing in.

BIcandy: Instant Dashboards and Beautiful Maps

“Too much of a good thing can be wonderful.”

– Mae West

BIcandy proves it. Run a query that returns a date and an amount, and Nexus builds the dashboard for you: totals by year, month, weekday and hour, plus maps where the size of each circle shows the amount in each city. It’s a sweet return on every result set.

There’s no dragging, no dropping and no separate BI tool. For a firm that lives on charts, BIcandy is the sweetest ticker in town.

More Than 100 Themes

“In the future, everyone will be world-famous for 15 minutes.”

– Andy Warhol, 1968

With Nexus, every theme can have its 15 minutes of fame. Nexus is the only query tool that lets you schedule your themes: change them by the clock, rotate through your favorites, or go light by day and dark at night. Your screen becomes pop art.

Choose from more than 100 themes, including Coffee, Ann Arbor Maize and Blue, Columbus Scarlet and Gray, Pittsburgh Black and Gold, and Green Bay Green and Gold. For a firm built on green, there’s always a theme in the money.

Why Nexus Tips the Scales

“In the short run, the market is a voting machine but in the long run, it is a weighing machine.”

– Benjamin Graham

Vendor query tools win a lot of short-run votes. Snowsight, BigQuery Studio and the Databricks SQL Editor each come with their own system, and each one stays home. Weigh them over 20 years, and they come up light.

Nexus works equally well on every system it connects to. Microsoft OEM’d Nexus from 2009 to 2012 and gave it to its customers. A brokerage giant has held it since 2006, even after changing warehouses. On the weighing machine, Nexus tips the scales.

Your Turn to Invest

“The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The second best time is now.”

– Chinese proverb

This firm planted its Nexus tree 20 years ago, and 15,000 users still enjoy the shade. Your second best time is now. Ask for a 30-minute demo, and we’ll run Nexus on your own systems, BigQuery byte preview included. If you’d rather try it yourself, ask for a free trial. Either way, the market is open.

If your company has thousands of users, ask about a Universal License: one price, every user. Buy the haystack, and let the needles take care of themselves.

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.