Choosing the Best NoSQL Reporting Tool for Your Team

TL;DR

• Most BI tools aren’t built for NoSQL, but a few stand out.
  
• We compare top BI platforms for NoSQL: Knowi, Grafana, Metabase, Zeppelin, and Redash.
  
• Knowi leads with native NoSQL connectors, AI insights, NLQ, and real-time dashboards.
  
• Other tools offer strengths in visualization, flexibility, or developer control, but often lack full NoSQL support or AI features.
  

Table of Contents

1. Introduction
   
2. Criteria for Choosing NoSQL BI Tools
   
3. Knowi
   
4. Grafana
   
5. Metabase
   
6. Zeppelin
   
7. Redash
   
8. Final Verdict and conclusion
   
9. Frequently Asked Questions

Introduction

We have covered why traditional BI fails with NoSQL. In case you missed this blog, read it here.  In this post, we explore modern tools designed to work with MongoDB, Cassandra, Elasticsearch, and more, without relying on painful ETL processes.

Criteria for Choosing NoSQL BI Tools

• Native NoSQL integration (without 3rd-party connectors)
  
• Support for joins across SQL, NoSQL, APIs
  
• AI-powered analysis and NLQ
  
• Visualization quality
  
• Real-time capabilities
  
• Embedded/white-labeling features

Knowi

Knowi logo (image- www.knowi.com)

Knowi is a business intelligence platform that unifies analytics across various data sources, including SQL, NoSQL, APIs, and cloud-based services. It’s popular for its ability to handle unstructured data and its search-driven analytics capabilities, allowing users to query data using natural language. 

Knowi Features

1. Data-as-a-Service

Knowi offers native integration with all popular NoSQL data sources (such as MongoDB, Apache Cassandra, and ElasticSearch), as well as files, APIs, SQL, and cloud data sources. 

Knowi data sources (image- www.knowi.com)

2. Ask questions of your data

Knowi has a search-driven analytics feature to enable users to ask questions of their data in plain English and get instant answers, even in the form of visualizations. 

3. AI-powered analytics

Knowi automatically generates instant dashboards and insights from your data. It also detects trends and anomalies to give you immediate insights across your data. 

4. Visualizations

Knowi comes with over 30 customizable visualizations for presenting data visually. 

5. Chat with your Documents

Knowi’s Document AI feature enables you to ask questions in plain English from any document and get answers and summaries. 

6. Machine learning algorithms

Knowi has some built-in machine learning algorithms for descriptive and predictive analytics. 

7. Multi-Data Source Joins

Knowi supports inner join, right outer join, left outer join, full outer join, and loop join operations, enabling you to blend data across multiple structured and unstructured sources. 

8. Embedded Analytics

Knowi enables users to embed dashboards, visualizations, and its AI capabilities where needed. You can white label the embedded content to match your application. 

Knowi Benefits

1. Natively integrates with NoSQL data sources. 
2. Suitable for both technical and non-technical users. 
3. Fit for advanced analytics. 

Limitations of Knowi

1. Not open source. 
2. Complex user interface for data engineers. 
3. Its out-of-the-box visualizations are not very beautiful.

Grafana

Grafana logo (image- grafana.com)

Grafana is an open-source data visualization tool that supports integration with various NoSQL data sources such as MongoDB, Elasticsearch, and Apache Cassandra. 

Grafana Features

1. Integrations

Grafana users can pull data from NoSQL databases, cloud services, Google Sheets, Raspberry Pi, or a Kubernetes cluster. They can also build custom plugins to connect to unsupported data sources. 

Grafana data sources (image-grafana.com)

2. AI-powered features

Grafana uses AI to automate repetitive manual tasks, get faster incident responses with automated checks, and optimize costs and engineering hours. 

3. Machine learning

Grafana has machine learning tools for predictive analytics, outlier detection, and alerting. 

4. Visualizations

Grafana offers graphs, charts, and widgets for data visualization. Ou can install panel plugins for additional visualizations. 

5. Alerts

Grafana periodically checks for pre-defined conditions in your data and alerts via email, Slack, PagerDuty, or webhook if they are met. 

Grafana Benefits

1. Integrates with NoSQL data sources.
2. Offers AI/ML insights.

Limitations of Grafana

1. Few integrations. 
2. Limited AI features. 

Metabase

Metabase logo (image- www.metabase.com)

Metabase is an open-source business intelligence tool that enables users to connect to NoSQL databases such as MongoDB. Metabase users can create custom drivers to connect to data sources of interest. 

Metabase Features

1. Data sources

Metabase has official connectors to NoSQL databases such as MongoDB. It also features a list of community connectors created by the Metabase community. 

Metabase data sources (image- www.metabase.com)

Metabase users can write custom drivers for data sources of interest. 

2. Visual Query builder 

Metabase has a point-and-click tool to help users without SQL knowledge to self-serve insights. 

3. Models

Metabase users can create annotated, metadata-rich models to give teams a reliable starting point for self-service analytics. 

4. White-labeled embedded analytics

Metabase allows you to enhance your SaaS app with fully branded, embedded analytics. 

5. Alerts

Metabase users can set up alerts to send results of questions to people via Slack, email, or webhook.

Metabase Benefits

1. Integrates with NoSQL data sources. 
2. Ease of use. Users can self-serve insights even without SQL skills. 

Limitations of Metabase

1. Limited customization options for visualizations. 
2. Lacks AI-powered features. 

Zeppelin

Zeppelin logo (image- zeppelin.apache.org)

Apache Zeppelin is a web-based, open-source notebook for interactive data analytics and collaborative document creation. It enables users to explore and visualize data in their web browsers using programming languages such as Python, R, Scala, SQL, and others. 

Zeppelin Features

1. Integrations

Zeppelin has interpreters for NoSQL data sources like Cassandra, ElasticSearch, and MongoDB. It also supports data processing platforms like Python, R, markdown, Spark, and Shell. 

Apache Zeppelin data sources (image- zeppelin.apache.org)

2. Visualizations

Zeppelin comes with basic charts, such as pivot charts and dynamic forms, for data visualization. They can be created through drag-and-drop functionality. 

3. Collaboration

Zeppelin users can collaborate by sharing notebooks and paragraphs. It broadcasts changes in real-time, just like collaborating on Google Docs. 

4. Embedded Analytics

Zeppelin enables you to easily publish your paragraph on an external website using an iframe tag. 

Benefits of Zeppelin

1. Integrates with NoSQL data sources. 
2. Extensible in terms of integrations.

Limitations of Zeppelin

1. Limited integrations.
2. Requires technical knowledge.
3. Few visualizations.
4. Lacks AI features. 

Redash

Redash logo (image- redash.io)

Redash is an open-source business intelligence platform that enables users to connect to SQL, NoSQL, Big Data, and API data sources. 

Redash Features

1. Data source connectivity

Redash integrates with NoSQL data sources such as MongoDB, ElasticSearch, and Apache Cassandra. It can also be integrated with SQL, Big Data, and API data sources. 

Redash data sources (image- redash.io)

2. Querying and Exploration

Redash offers an online SQL editor where users can write reusable queries and snippets for data visualization. 

3. Visualizations

Redash users can visualize their data on charts, maps, and tables using a drag-and-drop functionality. Visualizations can be resized and scheduled to be refreshed from data sources. 

4. Embedded analytics

Redash users can share dashboards on a URL or embed widgets where needed for timely and contextual data. 

5. Alerting

Redash can be configured to send alerts via email, Slack, PagerDuty, Mattermost, Google Hangouts Chat, HipChat, ChatWork, or Generic WebHook when query results meet certain conditions.

Redash Benefits

1. Integrates with NoSQL data sources. 
2. Customizable visualizations and extensible integrations. 

Limitations of Redash

1. Only has a few integrations. 
2. Lacks AI and machine learning features. 
3. Users may require SQL skills. 
4. Limited visualization options. 

Final Verdict and Conclusion

Tool	Native NoSQL	NLQ	AI Features	Joins	Real-Time	Embedding	Open-Source
Knowi	✅ Yes	✅	✅ Yes	✅	✅	✅	❌
Grafana	✅ Some	❌	⚠️ Limited	❌	✅	✅	✅
Metabase	✅ MongoDB	⚠️ Partial	❌ None	❌	❌	✅	✅
Zeppelin	✅ Yes	❌	❌ None	❌	✅	✅	✅
Redash	✅ Yes	❌	❌ None	❌	⚠️ Basic	✅	✅

NoSQL databases are non-relational database management systems that provide a flexible schema for storing unstructured and semi-structured data. 

Historically, BI tools were designed to work with structured/relational data stored in SQL databases. This makes integrating BI tools with NoSQL databases a challenge. 

Most BI tools overcome this challenge by depending on third-party tools such as APIs or JDBC and ODBC drivers to connect to NoSQL databases. Others require users to move the unstructured data into an SQL data warehouse using ETL processes. 

Knowi, Grafana, Metabase, Zeppelin, and Redash are some of the popular BI tools that offer native integration with NoSQL databases. 

Knowi integrates with all popular NoSQL databases and offers several AI-powered features for both basic and advanced data analytics. 

Grafana is an open-source data visualization tool that integrates with a few NoSQL databases and offers some AI-powered features for data analytics. 

Metabase supports integration with some NoSQL databases, and it has about 15 visualizations for presenting data, which are not customizable. 

Zeppelin is an open-source, web-based BI tool with interpreters for various NoSQL databases. Zeppelin users can visualize their data by writing queries in Python, R, Scala, etc. 

Redash is an open-source BI platform that integrates with various NoSQL data sources. Redash users can visualize their data by writing SQL queries. 

Looking for a BI tool that can natively integrate with your NoSQL data? Try Knowi. Talk to our team for personalized demo today!

Frequently Asked Question