Choosing the right Querying Tool

Choosing the right tool

In addition to the web-based analytics platform, Relevant offers a PostgreSQL data warehousewhich you can query to write custom reports.

To be able to query the data warehouse, we recommend installing a querying tool on your computer. A querying tool is a program that allows you to connect to our data warehouse and write SQL queries to extract and manipulate your data. It also has useful features that allow you to write SQL queries efficiently and in an organized manner.

There are many querying tools out there, both free and paid. If you want to learn more about the different tools out there, just search “ PostgreSQL querying tools” on Google, and that should pull up countless articles by bloggers and other developers about the best tools that are currently available ( like this one).

If you want our take on which tool to install, here’s a list of tools that we recommend, either because we’ve used it ourselves or because some of our existing health centers use it:

  1. JetBrains Datagrip - We highly recommend this program - this is what we use at Relevant. It has many useful features, integrates with Relevant very well, and allows for a very smooth experience for the user
    • This is a paid software -  each staff member who wishes to use it on their own computer must purchase an individual license
    • JetBrains has noted on their site that non-profit organizations may qualify for a discount; we encourage you to reach out to their Sales team to find out if you can obtain a discount
  2. DBeaver - This is a free, open-source platform.
  3. pgAdmin - This is a free, open-source platform.

Before you install a querying tool, please take note of the following:

  • We strongly recommend that you install this tool on a work, or health center provisioned, computer. The Data Warehouse contains the protected health information (PHI) of your organization’s patients, so it is best to access this data from a secure device.
  • If you are not sure about your organization’s policy around accessing the data in our Data Warehouse, we encourage you to reach out to your IT department and/or compliance officers to gather their input before you proceed.

Next Steps

Once you install a querying tool (installation instructions can be found at the querying tool’s personal website), go ahead and check out our next article on how to connect your tool to Relevant’s Data Warehouse.