How can i integrate reporting from multiple data sources in a visual tool?

[Natalie84]

I’ve built a pretty complex internal tool for my team using a visual development environment, but now they’re asking for reporting features that need to pull from multiple data sources. I’m worried I’ve hit a wall where the platform’s built-in logic just can’t connect everything without getting messy.

[AnthonyS]

I ran into the same wall. The platform was great for building features, but once I tried pulling from three different data sources the built in logic turned into a tangle. We prototyped a lightweight ETL that normalizes the sources into a small warehouse and then point the reports at that. It felt brittle, and we kept chasing edge cases, but at least the dashboards didn’t explode every time one source refreshed.

[Sophia_J]

The moment the second source landed, query times exploded and the refresh would fail with odd join issues. We added some basic aggregates and cached them locally, which helped a bit, but then the stale data guilt started piling up.

[PenelopeUG]

I tried a federated query approach but the different schemas and permissions made it unstable. It looked nice on paper, but in practice it collapsed under the first schema drift.

[Ethan.W]

Do you think the real problem is how the data is modeled or is it the connectors just not handling the complexity well?