Seeking Recommendations for Hands-on Experience with Alternative/ Cloud based Databases

Question

Dear Colleagues,

Throughout my journey as an Alteryx Designer, I have primarily worked with Excel and CSV data files. I am now seeking to expand my skills and gain hands-on experience with alternative databases such as OleDB, ODBC, and cloud-based databases such as MongoDB and MySQL.

I would greatly appreciate any suggestions or recommendations that would enable me to gain this valuable experience.  I am eager to continue growing my expertise in Alteryx Designer and believe that expanding my knowledge in these areas will be a valuable asset to my skill set.

Thank you in advance for your assistance. I look forward to your response.

Best regards.

simonaubert_bd · Answer

Hello,

If you don't want to loose time in DB administration, you can either use :
-Open-Source and easy to install solutions (such as postgresql or Mysql)
-free account on a cloud platform

Sadly, Alteryx does not support too many DB, especially for in database. It doesn't work with MonetDB, DuckDB or SQLite, that are my favorite db for learning purposes etc.

Best regards,

Simon

RobertOdera · Answer

Hi, @sanjay_shinde

I will offer the following:

1. Reflect on the alternative database experiences you would like to explore and then "Search" in the Alteryx Community for posts marked as solutions. Use them as a springboard

2. In Alteryx Designer, click on all the tools in the "In/Out" and "In-Database." Select Open Example for all the tools and explore them extensively, paying attention to the configuration (best if you can connect to a similar DB that you have access to)

3. Help --> Tutorials --> Input and View Data --> Connecting to Data

4. Use the new Alteryx Certification guides as your knowledge plan. These will give you a sound basis, plus you can certify afterward

5. Check in the community or on the internet for past Alteryx conference materials (I have some old 2016 and 2018 that I can share if you DM me). Best if you watch out for the upcoming conference and attend in-person or virtual Inspire 2023 | Alteryx

6. Designer Cloud Core - Alteryx Community

Hopefully, this helps - Cheers!

apathetichell · Answer

Sign up for a free Snowflake account.

You should also be splitting your dbs in two categories:

1) SQL/semi-SQL based (ie Snowflake/MySQL/Postgres/BigQuery/Redshift/Databricks etc).

2) NoSQL (Dynamo DB/MongoDB/DataStax etc...)

From Alteryx's perspective if it's cloud or not will not matter. The connection set up will be facilitated by  an ODBC driver for a SQL/Semi-SQL either way...