Your own databases.
Most businesses have one system that was never bought off a shelf - the operational database somebody built years ago that runs the actual work. It usually holds the most interesting numbers in the company and it has never appeared in a report.
Data comes in, so it can be reported on, trended and watched.
Read-only, always
We connect with credentials scoped to read. Nothing is written, nothing is altered, and no schema of yours is changed to suit us.
It joins to everything else
This is the point. Your bespoke job table next to your Xero invoices is a question nobody has been able to answer without exporting both to Excel and hoping.
You keep the database
It stays where it is, under your control, in your infrastructure. We are a reader, not a new home for it.
It behaves like any other connection
Once it is in, its tables can drive reports, sit in buckets and be watched by a Pulse, exactly like a packaged integration.
Where this usually comes from.
The data that runs your business and has never made it into a report, because no reporting product has ever heard of your system.
Data you could get from a packaged integration instead. If we already have a pipeline for it, use that - it is maintained, and your database connection is your responsibility to keep alive.
Six kinds of connection, and they are not interchangeable.
Picking the wrong one is the most common mistake people make in their first fortnight, so here is the whole set in one place.
Purpose-built pipelines into the systems you already run
EVA reaches into another system and does something
Spreadsheets and CSVs that never had a system to live in
Contracts, leases and policies she can read and cite
Public pages worth watching, read on a schedule
Databases, answered.
Do you copy my database?
We read from it. It stays where it is, in your infrastructure and under your control. What we hold is what is needed to answer the questions you have asked, in your own region.
What access do you need?
Read-only credentials, scoped to the tables you want reported on and nothing else. If a table is not part of the answer, it does not need to be in the grant.
Which database engines can you connect to?
The common SQL engines. Because these connections are set up individually rather than picked from a list, the practical answer depends on where the database lives and how it can be reached - so it is a conversation rather than a checkbox.
Can I join my own database to my accounting data?
Yes, and that is usually the reason people ask. Once both are connected they sit in the same warehouse, so a report can read your bespoke job table and your Xero invoices together and reconcile them against each other.
Connect one and see.
Bring your messiest system and your simplest one. Fourteen days is enough to find out whether this works on both.