Data Sources
You pull it. We analyze it. Simple.
While Mercury is primarily used to provide insight for accounting, manufacturing, and inventory management, we know that information often resides outside of your ERP system. With Mercury, your organization can use data from multiple sources.
SQL Queries of ERP Data
Mercury works with most accounting and manufacturing systems, even multi-database and multi-server environments. All Mercury needs to do its magic is to have SQL Queries that return a tabular result set. SQL Queries can be pulled from stored procedures, views, SQL statements, and web services (OData, etc). Multiple result-sets for use in Master/Detail reports are also supported.
Data retrieval is best done by someone with a strong database background who is already familiar with the databases in your organization. If that isn’t you, you may want to ask:
- Internal IT or software development team members
- Your accounting software consultants. Most ERP VARs have this expertise
- Our team can also assist with data retrieval (as an additional service)
You can find more detailed instructions about data retrieval in our Support KnowledgeBase.
Folder Data Queries
You may get data sent to you on a regular basis that you want included in your analyses. Reports like:
- Website or server activity logs
- Transaction reports from vendor
- Quality control reports
- Shipping updates
Assuming each report type you receive has the same columns, rows, and delimiters, you can use Mercury’s Folder Data Queries (FDQ) feature to pull in all data from all files in the folder specified. This time-saving feature eliminates the need to combine files and keep re-defining fields. The report designer simply chooses FDS as the data source and writes standard SQL statements to query the data. The user can then use the data without any additional steps.
CSV Data
Of course the simplest data that anyone can import is a CSV file. Once you start reusing the same fields repeatedly, it makes sense to use the Folder Data Queries source instead of importing spreadsheets one-by-one.
