Zansa › Answers › Integration and BI tools
Is it safe to connect a BI tool directly to my production database?
It is risky. Heavy analytical queries can slow your live application, and broad access can expose sensitive data. Use a read replica or a separate reporting database, a read-only account with limited permissions, and ideally run queries against modelled tables rather than raw ones.
Safer set-up:
- Replicate production data to a reporting database or warehouse.
- Create a dedicated read-only user.
- Restrict that user to the schemas or views needed.
- Set query timeouts and limit concurrency.
- Allow connections only from known addresses or through a secure tunnel.
If you must connect directly for a small system, schedule heavy queries off-peak and monitor performance. Direct access is a short-term compromise, not a long-term design.
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