Google attacks Microsoft Power BI
Google Data Studio is now able to connect to Microsoft SQL Servers
Maybe many of you have been waiting for this. Google Data Studio now also offers a connector to MSSQL servers — at least in the beta version. But you can already use it without any problems. For me this is a milestone and a direct attack on Microsoft Power BI. Because now Data Studio is again a bit closer to the top solutions like Power BI and Qlik or Tableau. In addition, you no longer have to use MS products or load the data into a data warehouse beforehand if they come from Microsoft servers. The advantage for Google’s solution is of course that Data Studio is free of charge.
Status Quo
Until now, Data Studio could not be directly connected to Microsoft databases. Either a solution such as the in-house product Power BI was used or the data had to be loaded into BigQuery via a data integration process. Only then was it possible to display the data with Google Data Studio.
How to Connect
Connecting to an MSSQL database is actually pretty straight forward. Under the menu item “Add data to report” you can then select the connection Microsoft SQL Server. After that you have to enter the host, port, username etc. similar to an MySQL and data sources.
