5 Best PostgreSQL Reporting Tools

Carrying out an insightful data analysis for your business requires having the ability to not only store or access data, but also to transform it into a form, that can help draw powerful and holistic insights using a reporting tool. Choosing the ideal reporting tool by taking into consideration various factors such as its functionalities, processing power and flexibility, that it will add to your overall technical architecture, is hence a crucial decision for any enterprise architect.

This article focuses on reporting analytics for PostgreSQL database and provides you with a comprehensive list of some of the best PostgreSQL Reporting Tools available in the market today. It also introduces you to the various factors that you must consider before selecting a PostgreSQL Visualization tool for your business.

Introduction to PostgreSQL

PostgreSQL is a powerful, enterprise-class, open-source relational database management system that uses standard SQL to query the relational data and JSON to query the non-relational data residing in the database. PostgreSQL has excellent support for all of the operating systems. It supports advanced data types and optimization operations, usually found in commercial databases such as Oracle, SQL Server, etc.

Key features of PostgreSQL:

• It has extensive support for complex queries.
• It provides excellent support for geographic objects & hence it is useful for geographic information systems & location-based services.
• It provides robust support for client-server network architecture.
• Its write-ahead-logging (WAL) feature makes it fault-tolerant.

Factors to Consider Before Selecting a PostgreSQL Reporting Tool

Choosing the ideal reporting tool for your analytics database, such as PostgreSQL is one of the most crucial decisions that can make or break the effectiveness of your data warehousing system. With the integration. The following are some of the factors that you must take into consideration before choosing one of the PostgreSQL Reporting Tools available in the market:

• The learning curve of the platform or the amount of time you must dedicate to learn the platform and use it productively. 
• The complex PostgreSQL analytics & data transformation functionalities that are provided to its users.
• Whether your business use case requires real-time or batch-based reporting & analytics tools.
• The kind of customer support your organisation is looking for, community or individual customer support for your reporting tool.
• The type of reporting tool that your organisation wants to have in place, an on-premises or a cloud-based reporting tool.

Top 5 PostgreSQL Reporting Tools

Choosing the ideal reporting tool that perfectly meets your business requirements can be a challenging task, especially when there’s a large variety of tools available in the market. To simplify your search, here is a comprehensive list of 5 best PostgreSQL Reporting Tools, that you can choose from and start analyzing your data:

• Apache Superset
• Tableau
• Metabase
• Looker
• Google Data Studio

1. Apache Superset

Apache Superset is a popular open-source reporting tool that provides users with robust integration support with numerous databases and various other data sources. It follows a no-code methodology and houses an easy-to-use UI, allowing developers & analysts to create compelling and informative dashboards that refresh in real-time.

It further supports integrating with various open-source processing tools such as Spark, Hadoop, etc. and ensures data security using its robust user access and authentication layer that allows you to set up granular permissions.

It supports both batch & real-time business use cases. It further provides users with diverse community support, helping them maintain their on-premise software as Apache Superset follows a strict on-premises based deployment model.

Unique features

• It provides excellent SQL IDE and an effective metadata browser that helps in preparing data to create visualizations. 
• It enables within-memory querying and asynchronous caching.
• Robust backend technology makes it one of the most suitable PostgreSQL Reporting tools.

Limitations of using Apache Superset as PostgreSQL Reporting Tool

• It may require technical expertise for usage and scalability. Also, its performance is dependent on the capabilities of the data store. 
• You may require external plugins for some advanced visualizations.

Pricing Model of Apache Superset

Apache Superset is open-source PostgreSQL Report Builder software, and hence it is available to users free of cost.

For further information on what makes Apache Superset, one of the best PostgreSQL Reporting Tools available in the market, you can check the official website here.

2. Tableau

Tableau is one of the most robust Postgres reporting tools, available as a part of the complete suite for managing all your data processing needs. It houses data visualization capabilities and allows you to create informative business dashboards or reports that update in real-time with its automatic refresh functionality. It further houses a data transformation module known as Tableau Prep that is available along with the creator licence.

Tableau is available both as on-premise and on the cloud software. You can either install it on your system or use its cloud service, Tableau Server/Online, to create complex & interactive visualizations. Tableau has a high learning curve, and hence it requires users to devote time to learn the platform to get the most out of it. It further houses robust customer support that will help you fix the issues you come across.

Distinct features of Tableau

• It provides you with a large number of complex and advanced visualizations that can be used to make your report interactive and wholesome. 
• It enables you to analyze and compare your data through different lenses to get better insights.
• Its data drilling feature enables you to switch between different visualizations smoothly.

Pricing Model of Tableau

Tableau provides users with three different use-case based subscription offerings, namely Individuals, Team & Organizations and Embedded Analytics, with the “Individuals plan” starting at $70/month per user. It offers a free trial.

Limitations of Using Tableau as PostgreSQL Reporting Tool

• You need to clean your data before using Tableau, as it cannot work with unclean data. This can be tedious.
• It does not enable data dictionary and data modeling. Also, it does not collaborate properly when making dashboard and data logic.

3. Metabase

Metabase is an enterprise-grade open-source business intelligence tool that allows you to perform exploratory data analysis with ease. With Metabase in place, you can query databases in real-time to fetch crucial data, and hence it helps you get answers to all your questions in a matter of minutes. It further houses enterprise-level authentication mechanisms and provides you with granular control.

Metabase is available both as an on-premise and cloud-based SaaS offering. It also allows users to subscribe to the enterprise plan, in case they want to get some advanced functionalities for their business needs.

Unique features of Metabase

• Its ability to let you ask natural language questions is very helpful, especially for those with no coding knowledge. 
• It offers a wide range of interactive visualizations and also enables you to visualize local geospatial data.

Pricing Model of Metabase

Metabase provides users with three different subscription offerings, namely, Startup, Business and Enterprise, with the Startup plan available at $100/month. It offers a starter version at $85/month for five users, a Pro at $500/month for 10 users, and an Enterprise version starting from $15k annually.

Limitations of using Metabase as a PostgreSQL Reporting tool:

• Customization of the “from address” for emailed reports, alerts, and other such system notifications is not supported by it.
• It doesn’t support serialization

4. Looker

Looker is one of the most popularly used reporting tools available in the market. It has a strong focus on visualization and houses robust customization functionalities, allowing you to create compelling visualizations that match your business use cases. It also lets users collaborate and share informative business reports with ease.

Looker houses an intuitive LookML block functionality that allows users to generate SQL-based business reports and visualizations, even without having any prior knowledge of SQL. Looker is primarily available as a web-browser based offering, but you can also download & install it as an on-premises application on your system.

Unique features of Looker Studio

• Because of high scalability, it allows real-time data visualization irrespective of the size of the databases.
• It allows collaboration and makes your work productive as multiple of your team members can work on it simultaneously. 
• Whenever new data is entered, the visualizations auto-refreshes. This saves a lot of time.

Limitations of using Looker as a PostgreSQL Reporting tool

• Limited documentation, and insufficient guidance make it less user-friendly. 
• Absence of native real-time data integration creates latency in what the visualization shows and what the actual data is.

Pricing Model of Looker

Looker doesn’t have transparent pricing. It follows a quote-based pricing model that charges users based on various factors such as the deployment scale, number of users, etc. To get the exact tailored pricing for your business needs, you will have to get in touch with the Looker team. Looker further provides a free trial to the users. It offers three editions- Standard, Enterprise, and Embed.

5. Google Data Studio

Google Data Studio is a fully-managed cloud-based reporting tool made available to users by Google. It houses a user-friendly interface that has a minimal learning curve & provides robust integration support for PostgreSQL and almost 200+ other connectors, allowing you to integrate data and create compelling visualizations.

It follows a web-based architecture, and hence it doesn’t provide any on-premise or desktop application based functionalities. With Google Data Studio in place, you can carry out an in-depth analysis of your data using its calculated fields and metrics. It also allows you to refresh your data source at scheduled intervals of time, however, it lacks the support of real-time or auto-refreshing dashboards.

Distinct features of Google Data Studio

• It offers a large variety of advanced data visualizations that can be helpful in complex data analysis. 
• It enables you to integrate with various data sources, combining PostgreSQL with data from different systems to create meaningful insights.

Pricing Model of Google Data Studio

Google Data Studio is available completely free of cost as a part of the Google Cloud Platform. Any user who has a valid Google account can start using and leveraging all features of Google Data Studio. It is free to connect only with some other Google platforms.

Limitations of Using Google Data Studio as a PostgreSQL Reporting Tool

• Its customer support is not responsive, and though it claims to connect with a large number of connectors, its functionality is limited with respect to this. It allows data blending only with 5 data sources, and even with them, your reports may break while data pulling. 
• It does not support complex and advanced data visualizations.

Conclusion

This article introduced you to some of the best PostgreSQL Reporting Tools available in the market that you can use to perform and refine your PostgreSQL analytics. It also provides in-depth knowledge about their features, use cases, and pricing.

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FAQ on PostgreSQL Reporting Tools