Compare Alteryx

[singhv18]

Dear Esteemed Community Members,

I am working in field of data for more than 6 years and have worked on tools like Tableau, Power BI, R and Python.

I am new to Alteryx. It would be of great help if someone can help me with few queries:

1. Is it safe to compare Alteryx with traditional ETL tools like ODI or SSIS? And, which one has more advantage over other.

2. Which is more powerful Alteryx or Power Query?

3. If one knows coding esp. for predictive analytics, what advantage does Alteryx provide over  R  or Python?

4. Can Power BI or Tableau dashboards be replicated in Alteryx.

Warm Regards,

Vinay Singh

[mceleavey · Accepted solution]

Hi @singhv18 ,

having a fair deal of experience in some of those platforms I can have a crack at answering some of these questions:

1. "Is it safe to compare Alteryx with traditional ETL tools like ODI or SSIS? And, which one has more advantage over other."

-Yes, it is fair as these tools attempt to perform similar tasks in data blending and prep. I can only speak for SSIS, but comparing Alteryx with SSIS is like comparing an Aston Martin to a skateboard. SSIS is extremely limited in functionality, and requires more time to master as the UI is nowhere near as intuitive. Ultimately, your development time in Alteryx will be a fraction of that in SSRS. Also, the connectivity and freedom to bring together a more diverse range of data sources is far more comprehensive in Alteryx. 

Having used SSIS and Alteryx, I would never dream of using SSIS again.

2. "Which is more powerful Alteryx or Power Query?"

-Alteryx. Very simple. Power Query is an extension of Excel's DAX functionality and as such has the same limitations. Try putting 3gb of data into each and see how you get on. Also, as above, try scraping HTML, parsing JSON files, connecting in-database to your SQL warehouse and dynamically loading in 5000 spreadsheets simultaneously in Power Query. 

3. "If one knows coding esp. for predictive analytics, what advantage does Alteryx provide over  R  or Python?"

-Alteryx gives you access to R and Python packages which you can load into Alteryx, so they are not mutually exclusive. Alteryx requires no coding and use those pre-built R packages, for example within a drag and drop workflow. 

Secondly, due to the drag and drop interface, people with zero coding skills can achieve the same results, meaning you've just increased the number of users in your organisation who can carry out the advanced analytics from 2 to 200, potentially. 

4. "Can Power BI or Tableau dashboards be replicated in Alteryx."

-No. Alteryx has some interactive visualisation functionality but not to the extent of dedicated BI platforms such as Qlik Sense, Power BI, Tableau etc. Alteryx carries out the heavy lifting, the grunt work in the background before presenting cleansed, normalised and formatted data models to those platforms for front end consumption. It wouldn't really be fair to compare these platforms as I see them as complimentary.

I hope this is useful.

M.

[singhv18]

Thaks @mceleavey. That's very much helpful.