A live connection means the BI tool sends each question to your database or warehouse at the moment someone opens a dashboard, and shows the answer. No copy of the data is taken; the figures are as current as the system they come from. Change a record in the source and the next refresh of the dashboard reflects it.
Live connections suit numbers that are acted on during the day. A logistics control room watches deliveries in progress; a hospital watches beds and waiting lists; an online retailer watches orders during a sale. In each case last night’s copy is not good enough. Live also matters for data ownership: if nothing is copied, there is no second version of the truth to secure, reconcile or delete when a contract ends.
The trade-off is that live queries put load on the source system, and a very slow source makes a slow dashboard. The rule of thumb is: connect live to databases and warehouses that can take the questions, use a read-only login, and switch to a scheduled import for apps and files that have no live door or for large history tables where a nightly copy is fast and fresh enough. A page can mix both.
In Klayara, databases and warehouses connect live by default, with read-only access, and stay fast on tables with more than 100 million rows; files and business apps import on a schedule, and both can sit on the same dashboard. See the connectors and security pages.