In a widely reported University of Michigan study, researchers estimated that eating a single hot dog could cost you about 36 minutes of healthy life.

That raises an important question:

Which is worse for your users—a hot dog or Teradata Studio?

It is a tough call.

The hot dog may shorten your life, but at least it tastes good.

Teradata Studio is free.

And sometimes you get exactly what you pay for.

Why Is the Query Tool Free?

Think about this.

A company can spend millions purchasing a Teradata system. Add professional services, support, consulting, education, and years of investment building one of the most sophisticated data warehouses in the world.

Then everybody accesses that multimillion-dollar investment with a free query tool?

That is like buying a Ferrari and asking whether the dealer can throw in a free lawn chair for the driver’s seat.

Maybe Teradata provides free query tools such as SQL Assistant and Teradata Studio purely out of customer appreciation.

It is possible.

I once saw a Teradata salesman on a cold day with his hands in his own pockets.

One Major State Agency Finally Said, “Enough”

A major state government agency had used Teradata for years as its enterprise data warehouse.

They liked Teradata.

They still use Teradata today.

What they could no longer justify was having thousands of users depend primarily on Teradata’s free SQL Assistant and Teradata Studio tools to access that valuable data.

So they purchased a Universal License of Nexus.

They didn’t replace Teradata.

They upgraded the user experience.

Teradata remains the powerful engine behind their data warehouse. Nexus gives their users a modern way to access it, analyze it, visualize it, and work with data throughout the enterprise.

Teradata Is Still a Great Database

I have spent decades teaching Teradata, and people still refer to me as Tera-Tom, and I consider it one of the most powerful and sophisticated database platforms ever built.

This isn’t an argument against Teradata.

It is an argument that your query tool matters.

Your users spend their days writing SQL, examining results, exporting data, building analytics, and turning data into answers.

Why give them a multimillion-dollar database and make the interface an afterthought?

The World Has Changed

When we released the first version of Nexus 22 years ago, most companies had a primary enterprise data warehouse.

Today, data is everywhere.

Teradata. Snowflake. Databricks. BigQuery. Redshift. SQL Server. Azure Synapse. Oracle. PostgreSQL. MySQL. Cloud files. Excel.

That’s why the name Nexus means the intersection of all data.

Nexus doesn’t ask your company to pick a favorite database.

Nexus connects to all of them.

Users can query different database platforms from the same interface and even join data across database vendors.

Need Teradata data joined with Snowflake? Oracle with SQL Server? Databricks with Teradata?

That’s what Nexus was designed to do.

Think of Nexus as a Rosetta Stone for enterprise data. Your databases don’t have to speak the same language. Nexus helps them communicate.

All Databases Are Created Equal

Companies no longer live in a one-database world.

Your Teradata system may contain some of the most valuable data in your company, but tomorrow’s question might require data from Teradata, Snowflake, Databricks, Oracle, SQL Server, or a file sitting in the cloud.

Your users shouldn’t have to change tools every time the data changes locations.

With Nexus, the data can live anywhere.

The user doesn’t have to.

So here are two pieces of advice.

First, don’t make a habit of eating hot dogs. Your health is important to you, your family, and your company.

Second, don’t spend millions building a world-class data environment and then decide the tool your users work in all day should be free simply because free is available.

Keep Teradata. Keep Snowflake. Keep Databricks. Keep Oracle, SQL Server, BigQuery, and everything else your company needs.

Then put Nexus in the middle.

Because the future isn’t about choosing one database.

It’s about making all of your data work together.

And unlike the hot dog, trying Nexus shouldn’t cost you 36 minutes of your life.

Thank you,

Tera-Tom

Tom Coffing
CEO, Coffing Data Warehousing
Phone: 513 300-0341
Email: Tom.Coffing@CoffingDW.com
Website: CoffingDW.com

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