Denodo for AWS (Consumption Based Pricing)

I am switching from Denodo to other solutions. Currently, I work as a Data Engineer Team Lead at an Etex company, where I work with Oracle Data Integrator (ODI), Power BI, and sometimes Tableau. I use Oracle Data Integrator as my primary tool.

Denodo is part-time work with a Saudi company. My main position involves working as a team lead for ODI and Power BI. As a consultant, I determine whether Denodo is used in companies or if their customers are using it.

My Saudi company is Denodo partner in Egypt, and we work for clients in Saudi Arabia. I have been working with Denodo for the last three years.

I find the features related to data governance most valuable. The data catalog is particularly interesting, and it provides an overall point of view that is useful. From my experience as a data engineering team lead, I can build a data warehouse in just a minute from different sources without needing time for data transfer or any additional work.

Denodo can be improved by entering new markets. I am in Egypt now, and I think there are not enough companies dealing with Denodo. I faced issues when trying to find a new job using Denodo in Egypt, as it is very hard to find opportunities. Denodo should tap into new markets in the Middle East. Last year, I gave training for Saudi clients in Dubai, and even in Dubai, it needs time to find training centers or trainers to help spread Denodo practices.

I have been working with Denodo for the last three years.

I experienced a performance-related issue the last time I dealt with my client in Saudi Arabia, but I solved it by using some workarounds.

The issue I faced was related to data volume. My client has almost 100 million records, and the performance was impacted in a way that required optimization.

I did not always contact technical support from Denodo. I only contacted them when I took an exam as I am a certified Denodo consultant and developer. I faced a problem during the installation of Denodo on my laptop, and they helped me greatly to bypass this issue. This happened two years ago.

I solved the problem by myself.

The implementation is not complex at all for Denodo.

Denodo's security features are very aligned with my customer expectations. I can implement row-level security or column-level security, and I can hide columns from some departments. These security capabilities are very interesting.

I am satisfied with the performance for sure.

I did not deal with the pricing of Denodo as my company's financial requirements are managed by another team, so I do not know how much it costs.

Denodo's interoperability options make the integration process very easy.

I experienced something interesting when I integrated Denodo with SAP, and it was fantastic. Data governance is something very interesting as Denodo helped clients get what they need. I did not use the new AI features, as I expect no additional features from them related to generative AI. I did not deal with vector databases and do not have experience with them. I would generally recommend Denodo to others. They need to promote the product in the Middle East, but I am recommending Denodo to different companies. I am not sure how customers are dealing with Denodo from the AWS Marketplace or directly. I give this review a rating of eight out of ten.

My main use cases for Denodo involve implementing APIs to connect different data sources with new software to improve the process in Ecopetrol.

Denodo's best features are that it is very user-friendly and easy to use. It is flexible, and the data catalog is very useful.

The data cataloging has helped me in data discovery because this feature is very useful. All the people of the company can find different data for different projects. We created a data catalog for the company and to publish the API, and the different projects can use the APIs and reuse them.

To make it easier to use or a better tool, the architecture and internal design of the folders for organizing the structure of the different data could be more structured. Denodo does not have a guide for easily structuring the data.

In the last 12 months, I am not still working with Denodo. This year I have not, but last December, I was using it.

Denodo is stable and good. I do not have crashes normally.

My thoughts on scalability are that it is good because I can use different setups or configurations.

I do not use the technical support, so I cannot rate the customer service or technical support.

I have not evaluated other data integration tools before because Denodo was the tool in the project and I do not see other tools.

The initial setup of Denodo was medium complex.

I do not know the pricing for Denodo because I only design and develop.

The security was good for us.

I do not have anything else on my mind as far as valuable features.

I do not know if the dynamic query optimization helped us improve performance or analytical queries as I am not familiar with dynamic query optimization.

My overall rating for this solution is 9.

I used Denodo for a few months early this year, from January to March. My main use case for Denodo during that period was visualizing data from Snowflake and other databases across multiple databases and doing various types of analytics on the data inserted in those databases. We used Denodo for getting the data across multiple databases and matching the data in between these databases to have a single entry point for our queries.

For example, we had a bunch of files arriving on Azure Data Lake Storage, and we needed to match when these files arrived to what we needed to do with those files that were stored in a Snowflake instance. So, we used Denodo to cross this data and select queries, and then apply the Azure function that we needed to do to these files that were arriving on our Azure storage.

Denodo offers a great query language, the VQL, which was very easy to understand for someone that only knows SQL. It was easy to work with, and it was easy to integrate various types of databases in general. The usability of the platform is very great. The federated queries were also a feature that I used a lot. The easy usability of Denodo helped my work and made things easier for productivity. We were able to ship code faster than if we needed to use another type of data visualization tool or even an ETL.

When we have multiple databases, the standard or common approach is just to have an ETL that matches the data, and we need to write this whole ETL. With Denodo, we can simplify this whole work to a few queries or setups in the databases and just make a few queries. This was actually easier, and it was faster to deliver a solution for a client instead of building a whole ETL pipeline or simply backfilling one database in another. Denodo simplifies your work and helps you ship code or ship solutions in a faster way. I really like the UI that Denodo has on the web app version. It was very simple and actually very beautiful to see. For a complicated program, it was very easy to understand how it works, even for someone who is just approaching the data engineering career or side of the programming language.

The desktop version of the Denodo app has a difficult UX to understand, touch, and set up. But they have fixed that on the web app version, which is nice. Overall, the platform works great with the current setup that they have. I didn't really get to know the quirks and the bad side of the platform, as I've only used it for three months. In my opinion, it's a great software, and it's not buggy at all. The interface is simple and easy to understand.

I've been working in my current field for eight years right now.

Denodo is stable.

The customer support for Denodo is great. They are very easy to work with, and all my questions and concerns were answered in a very short amount of time.

I didn't previously use a different solution before Denodo. When I saw Denodo for the first time, I thought it was great, but it was not my choosing to use Denodo; it was the standard platform for the company I was working at.

We use Microsoft Azure as the cloud provider for Denodo's private cloud deployment.

I can't share any metrics with you because I was just a developer. But my general impression is that yes, Denodo saves a lot of employees and development time. Because if you don't need to write a whole ETL to make the data virtualization, you need way fewer people to write a query instead of writing an ETL pipeline.

I didn't really manage the setup cost, licensing, and pricing for Denodo. But in my opinion, it's very expensive. For small companies, it's not a solution that most small companies can afford. But for big companies, the pricing seems fair. It would be nice to have a cheaper version of Denodo for small businesses.

My main advice is to read the documentation for Denodo. It's a very powerful solution, but it has a lot of quirks and a lot of things that can be done and should be done the right way to have better performance when using Denodo. The documentation is very clear and will help you 99% of the times. The review rating is 9.