A connector is the pre-built link between a BI tool and one specific kind of system. There is a connector for PostgreSQL, one for Salesforce, one for Shopify, one for Excel files, and so on. You supply the address and a login, and the connector knows how to read that system’s tables or records and present them in a shape you can chart. Without a connector, someone has to write and maintain that link by hand.
Connectors are why a BI project can start in an afternoon rather than a quarter. A retailer running Shopify online, Square in store and Xero for the books can connect all three and start relating orders to costs on day one. A distributor with an ERP on SQL Server and a fleet of spreadsheets does the same. The question to ask of any BI tool is not “how many connectors” but “are the five we actually use on the list, and do they read the fields we care about”.
Two things are easy to confuse. A connector decides whether data can be read at all; a live connection or a data import decides how it is read — in place, every time, or copied on a schedule. Some connectors support both modes, some only import. And a connector should only ever need read access; a tool that asks to write into your accounts system deserves a second look.
In Klayara, 50+ connectors cover databases, warehouses, files, spreadsheets and business apps, plus a general option for anything with an API. Browse the connector catalogue.