Frequently asked questions

General

What is Peliqan ?

Peliqan is an all-in-one data platform for business teams to work with their data from different sources including databases, data warehouses and SaaS business applications. Peliqan hides the complexity of a modern data stack and allows companies to work with their data without the need for data engineers. Working with data includes viewing data, sharing data, combining data from different sources, transforming data, making interactive data apps using low code scripting, enriching data, applying machine learning etc. Peliqan is built for 3 personas:

  • Business users can work with the data in a spreadsheet UI
  • Power users can apply “SQL on anything”
  • Technical users can use low-code scripting to build data apps

Is Peliqan a BI tool ?

Peliqan is not a BI tool but it has several built-in features to visualize data in charts. You can create charts from tables, or you can make a dashboard or interactive data app, using Peliqan’s built-in low-code scripting environment.

Can I connect to on-premise data sources ?

No, Peliqan only supports connections to databases, data warehouses and SaaS business applications that are accessible over the public internet. However, Peliqan offers a private cloud option that is deployed inside your own cloud and allows you to connect to internal resources in the same cloud.

Can Peliqan be deployed on premise ?

Yes, Peliqan is cloud-agnostic, runs on Kubernetes and can be deployed inside your own PVC on e.g. AWS, Azure or GCP. Contact us for more information on the private cloud option.

Can I build ELT/ETL pipelines in Peliqan ?

Peliqan takes away the complexity of traditional pipelines. Peliqan makes it easy to transform raw datasets into business-ready datasets that can be shared, visualized and made available in downstream apps. In Peliqan you define tables which are views/models based on other tables. For example you can use SQL to define new virtual tables. Peliqan takes care of the dependencies so that your virtual tables are up to date with the source. There’s no need to set up complex DAGs or orchestration workflows.

How does Peliqan fit into existing data pipelines ?

Peliqan can be used as a stand-alone platform since it’s an all-in-one data platform to connect, transform, share, visualise and analyse your data. However, Peliqan can also be part of a bigger data pipeline. Peliqan can consume data from upstream sources, see the Peliqan connectors for a list of potential data sources.

Peliqan applies the concept of data virtualization and will refresh data by doing pushdown of queries to the underlying sources.

Peliqan can share data to downstream applications by materializing tables in the built-in data warehouse. Downstream applications such as BI tools can connect to this data warehouse to consume data that was e.g. transformed in Peliqan.

Finally, Peliqan can be orchestrated using the Peliqan API.

How does Peliqan fit into the modern data stack ?

Companies with an already-deployed modern data stack will find that Peliqan is the perfect platform to enable true self-service access for business teams. Peliqan enables business teams to discover data, implement their own transformations and work with the data, without the support of a data team. Data teams can e.g. share datasets from their data warehouse through Peliqan to non-technical teams.

How can I connect my existing BI tool to Peliqan ?

While there are different ways to visualize your data inside Peliqan, you might still want to use your existing BI tool (Power BI, Tableau, Qlik, Looker etc.) to visualise data after preparing it in Peliqan. You can simply do so by materializing one or more tables, and then connecting with your BI tool to your Peliqan built-in data warehouse.

Connectors

What is a connector and which connectors are available in Peliqan ?

Connectors allow Peliqan to access data from a source. Peliqan has connectors for databases, data warehouses and for SaaS business applications such as CRM systems (Salesforce, Hubspot etc.), ERP systems (Odoo, Unleashed ERP etc.) and many other business applications.

What if I need a connector to a specific data source ?

The Peliqan connector can add new connectors in 2 business days at a fixed low one-time setup price. Contact support for more details.

For databases: please provide the name of the database system you want to connect, optionally including a test account.

For SaaS sources: Peliqan can work with any type of API (REST, SOAP Webservices, GraphQL etc.). Please provide following details if possible in your connector request:

  • Name of the SaaS business application
  • Brief description of the use case, e.g. which data do you need
  • Do you want to read data only or also perform write-back ?
  • Link to API documentation
  • If possible, test credentials to the API

Security & compliance

Does Peliqan store a copy of my data ?

No, Peliqan does not store a copy of the data that you process in Peliqan. If you build up virtual tables, views, queries et. Peliqan will fetch the data in real-time from the source when needed.

There are a few optional situations where Peliqan does store a copy of your data:

  • When you enable materializing selected tables
  • When you connect to SaaS business applications

Note that Peliqan can also fetch data in real-time from your SaaS sources, without storing a copy of the data. In this case Peliqan translates any SQL query into real-time API calls. However, this is limited to small amounts of data and/or data sampling.

Is Peliqan GDPR compliant ?

Yes, Peliqan is fully GDPR compliant.

As a customer you can choose in which region your account is provisioned, for example the EU region. Your data will never leave the selected region. For the EU instance, Peliqan uses AWS in Frankfurt, Germany.

Contact us by sending an email to gdpr@peliqan.io if you require more information or if you want to receive our standard DPA (data processing agreement). Peliqan can also work under your DPA, please send a copy to the above email address and allow for 7 business days as our legal team reviews.