Guiding Your Way to Tools and Techniques
Discover essential resources curated to boost your expertise in data analysis and management. These are in general public or third party resources, and the links are provided for your convenience.
This page will be updated frequently
Database Engines and Tools for Transforming and Loading
The level of data analytics that makes it all work: the structured and optimized storage and retrieval.
Tools for Analysis, Process Management, and Visualization
Everything that helps bring you from raw data to actionable insights.
All-in-One Data Analytical Platforms
Cloud-based platforms with a broad set of features, potentially all that you need for your data analytics.
Technologies Related to Data Analytics
A mixed group of technologies that will also be touched by many data analysts – because their role often includes various topics like establishing infrastructure, moving data, programming, and utilizing AI, next to the actual analytics.
Database Engines and Tools for Transforming and Loading
This section provides an overview of different tools and products that can be at assistance when loading, storing, maintaining, and transforming data, as well as simple querying, analysis, and reporting, to know and understand the data. The basis of your data analytics approach, but also useful for other data related activities.
The links have been sorted after the country of the currently controlling owner of the software, or of the operator of a cloud-based service, as this has increasing importance in the prevailing geopolitical and data protection reality. Open Source is considered neutral.
Please be aware that open source isn’t necessarily without payment, and commercial software isn’t necessarily with payment. Check each product for different editions and prices, before deciding what to use.
Database Engines
A curated list of both relational, NoSQL, and other types of database engines / table formats.
Open Source
- Apache Cassandra
NoSQL database - Apache CouchDB
NoSQL database - Apache Doris
OLAP database for real-time analytics and search - Apache Druid
OLAP database for real-time, event-based analytics, with SQL support - Apache Hadoop
Framework for distributed processing of big data (i.e., not a database engine) to be used with code libraries like MapReduce or such engines like Spark or Trino - Apache Iceberg
Data table format (i.e., not a database engine) for big data and lakehouses, to be used with such engines like Spark or Trino - ClickHouse
OLAP MPP database with SQL support - DuckDB
OLAP database with SQL support (embedded) - Firebird
Relational database - MariaDB
Relational database - Neo4j Graph Database
NoSQL database - PostgreSQL
Object-relational database - SQLite
Relational database as a C library (embedded)
From Europe
- Tinybird
Cloud-based, managed ClickHouse database
From the USA
- Google BigQuery
Cloud-based data warehouse - IBM Db2 Database
Relational database - Microsoft Access
Individual relational database app, part of MS 365 - Microsoft SQL Server
Relational database - Oracle AI Database
Relational database
From the rest of the world
- Coming soon
Extract, Transform, Load
Tools for actually putting data into the database storage in the shape needed.
Open Source
- Airbyte Core
Data integration, ELT - Apache Airflow
Workflow management platform for data engineering flows - Apache Hop
Workflow management platform to facilitate all aspects of data and metadata orchestration - Apache Kafka
Streaming / messaging system for data flows between applications, or to and from databases - dbt Core
Data build tool, for data warehouse data transformation and building semantic models - Delta Lake
Storage framework for building a format agnostic lakehouse architecture - OpenRefine
Tool for cleaning and transforming data
From Europe
- DBConvert
Database conversion and synchronization software
From the USA
- Alteryx Designer Cloud
Profiling (cleaning and wrangling), preparing, and pipelining data (renamed from Trifacta) - IBM StreamSets
Tool for setting up ETL / streaming data pipelines - Informatica Intelligent Data Management Cloud
Cloud-based, AI-powered data management - Quest erwin Data Management Platform
A set of tools for designing and maintaining SQL and NoSQL databases
From the rest of the world
- Pentaho Data Integration
Data orchestration tool
Query, Analyse, Report
Where the analyst turns the raw data into extracts, sums, and calculations.
Open Source
- Apache Spark
Query engine for big data, allows SQL queries, as a library for Python, SQL, Scala, Java or R - DbVisualizer
SQL query tool - Jamovi
Easy statistical analysis - JASP
Statistical analysis and publishing (embed in Word) - LibreOffice
Office automation package, including spreadsheet app - Neo4j Graph Data Science
Graph data analyzing and visualization - Orange Data Mining
- Trino
Query engine for big data, allows query federation
From Europe
- Count
Collaborative analytics platform - SAP Crystal Reports
SQL reports with both tabular data, visuals, and text, in screen and pdf editions
From the USA
- Altair RapidMiner
ELT, data mining, machine learning, statistical modeling, data analysis and visualization - IBM SPSS Statistics
Statistical analysis platform - Microsoft Excel
Spreadsheet app, part of MS 365 - Quest Toad
A series of SQL query tools for Oracle, DB2, and SQL Server
From the rest of the world
- Rguroo
Statistical analysis
Tools for Analysis, Process Management, and Visualization
The front-end activities of data analytics spread over a broad palette of programming, preparing, and visualizing, and there are tools for all of this, and more. Often, these tools will also provide for analysis and some level of data management.
The links have been sorted after the origin of the software, as this has increasing importance in the current geopolitical reality. Open source is considered neutral.
Please be aware that open source isn’t necessarily without payment, and commercial software isn’t necessarily with payment. Check each product for different editions and prices, before deciding what to use.
Programming and Scripting
For typing your way to insights, or simply for organizing the process, or the final results into useful overviews or workbooks.
Open Source
- Bash
Command line and scripting; text and file manipulation.
Part of Linux, on Mac as Terminal, and part of several packages for Windows: - Git
Version control for source code and other files - GNU Octave
Programming language, focused on mathematics and visualization - Julia
Programming language - JupyterLab and Jupyter Notebook
IDEs for several languages, including R, Python, and Julia - Python
Programming language - R
Programming language, focused on statistics and visualization - RStudio
IDE for R and Python - Visual Studio Code
Versatile editor and IDE with support for many languages and puposes
From Europe
- JetBrains PyCharm
Python IDE with notebooks and SQL
From the USA
- Microsoft Visual Studio
IDE and code editor with support for several languages, including Python
From the rest of the world
- Coming soon
Integrated and Process Tools
For arranging a flow of activities in one environment. This may include various types of tools, supporting various tasks.
Open Source
- DAX Studio
DAX editor and dataset analyzer as a companion to Power BI, SQL Server, and Excel - Grafana
Multi-platform analytics and interactive visualization web application - Knime Analytics Platform
Automated data access, transformation, visualization, and distribution platform - Tabular Editor 2.x
Build, optimize, and debug data models / semantic models for Microsoft Analysis Services, Power BI Premium and Fabric – open source version
From Europe
- Tabular Editor
Build, optimize, and debug data models / semantic models for Microsoft Analysis Services, Power BI Premium and Fabric
From the USA
- Alteryx One
Automated cleansing, analytics, and reporting tool - Microsoft Power BI
Data source management, visualization, and dashboard distribution - Salesforce Tableau
A suite of modules for data management and visualization
From the rest of the world
- Coming soon
Visualization Tools
Tools with the main focus on calculating and displaying ready results, as reports or dashboards, possibly with storytelling.
Open Source
- Apache Superset
SQL-based visualization - Matomo
Web and app analytics, renamed from Piwik - Metabase
End user natural language query and visualization - Plausible
Web analytics - Redash
Visualization and dashboard distribution - SigNoz, various apps
Cloud app metrics monitoring and visualization
From Europe
- SAP BusinessObjects BI
Real-time business intelligence - Steep
BI and visualization, based on a shared metrics catalog/semantic model - TARGIT Decision Suite
Embeddable end-to-end BI and analytics platform
From the USA
- Datadog, various apps
Cloud app metrics monitoring and visualization - Domo Platform
Cloud-based ETL, visualization, and storytelling - Google Looker
Cloud-based visualization - IBM Cognos Analytics
Visualization with self-service AI-based analytics tools, cloud-based - Mode Modern BI
Cloud-based platform for analytics - Qlik Cloud Analytics
Visualization with self-service and AI, cloud-based - Qlik Sense
Visualization with self-service, on-premise - Sigma
Cloud-based BI and analytics platform
From the rest of the world
- Holistics
Cloud-based, self-service analytics platform - Pentaho Business Analytics
No-code, end-user-oriented visualization
All-in-One Analytical Platforms
These are all cloud-based and provide ways to store, transform, and analyze date. Some organizations may want to choose to use one of these instead of arranging for an individually chosen set of tools.
They are all commercial – even if there may be open source products included, these are sold as some level of managed service.
All-in-One
From Europe
- SAP Business Data Cloud
Data lakehouse, data warehouse, transformation and flow tools, analytics, planning and financial simulation
From the USA
- Cloudera Platform
Databases, data lake, transformation and flow tools, and analytics - Databricks Platform
OLAP MPP database as well as relational databases, ETL, and analysis tools - IBM Cloud Pak for Data
Database, transformation and flow tools, statistics, and analytics - Microsoft Fabric
Databases, data lake, transformation and flow tools, and analytics
- SAS Viya
Cloud-native, end-to-end data and AI platform with transformation, flow tool, semantic modeling, but no data storage of its own – can be added as SAS SpeedyStore - Snowflake Platform
OLAP MPP database, cloud-based environment with analysis and other tools, but mainly a data warehouse and ETL - Teradata VantageCloud
Databases, data lake, transformation and flow tools, and analytics
Technologies Related to Data Analytics
A data analyst will often get in touch with a large amount of tools, covering everything from basic infrastructure, over data management and transforming tools, to programmatic, low-code or no-code analytical environments.
Cloud services are often touched, and so are tools for machine learning and various AI tools, spanning over an ever larger scope of use cases.
This section “fills up” the resource page with such typical tools that aren’t data analytics tools, strictly speaking, but which the analyst may need to know about.
Hardware and Operating Systems
The foundational components of a computing system, and some tools for using these.
Hardware
- Arduino
Microcontroller boards for various purposes, including sensor data collection and IoT - Raspberry PI
Credit card sized computers for various purposes, including sensor data collection and IoT
Operating Systems
- 24 Popular Linux Distributions
For download, from the Linux.org website
Tools
- balenaEtcher
Software for copying ISO images to SD cards and USB sticks - VirtualBox
Virtualization software for local use
Infrastructure and Cloud
Computers in combination, and all the communication that ties them together.
Infrastructure Tools
- Docker
Container apps and ecosystem - Kubernetes
Container orchestration - OpenTofu
Infrastructure as code, open source version of Terraform - Terraform
Infrastructure as code
Private Cloud, VPS, Colocation, Etc.
- Coming soon
Public Cloud Services
Machine Learning and AI
Tools for utilizing the umbrella term of AI – LLMs, neural networks. etc., and automation
AI Agents and Tools
- Omni
AI end-user analytics platform, LLM/chatbot based - ThoughtSpot
Suite of AI-agents and AI-based BI and analytics
Automation
Governance and Documentation
- Alation Agentic Data Intelligence Platform
Natural language-based hub for cataloging, governance, lineage, and quality - Collibra
AI and data hub for cataloging, governance, lineage, and quality - Kiteworks Private Data Network
Data and AI security and governance platform
Machine Learning
- Coming soon
Other AI
- Other tools