Analyze Data Wherever It Lives
Most manufacturing organizations already have valuable process, quality, and event data spread across multiple systems. Historians, MES databases, LIMS systems, custom SQL databases, and even Excel files often contain exactly the information teams want to analyze, but it is locked away from day‑to‑day quality analysis.
Quality Window is designed to close that gap. It allows you to directly connect to external data sources and bring that data into the same analysis environment you already use for SPC, investigation, and reporting.
This page explains what is possible, why it matters, and how teams typically get started.
Bring External Data Into Quality Window
Quality Window can connect directly to external databases using standard Windows data access technologies. Once connected, data from those systems can be loaded into a Quality Window application and analyzed just like native data.
Common examples include:
- Process historians storing time‑based measurements
- SQL databases used by MES or custom production systems
- Quality or inspection databases managed outside of Quality Window
- Event, alarm, or batch data stored in relational databases
- Excel or Access files used as operational data stores
The result is a single place to analyze data that previously lived in silos.
Designed for Manufacturing Reality
External data is rarely stored in a format that is immediately analysis‑ready. Quality Window includes tooling to handle common industrial data patterns so that imported data aligns with how quality and process teams actually work.
Typical scenarios include:
- Time‑stamped measurements stored as tags and values
- Data spread across multiple tables or views
- Gaps in data where values are only recorded on change
- The need to filter by plant, product, batch, or time window at load time
Quality Window handles these cases during data import so the resulting application behaves like any other Quality Window application.
Analyze, Don’t Just Extract
Once data is loaded, the full Quality Window analysis environment is available.
Teams commonly use this approach to:
- Analyze historical process data without exporting to spreadsheets
- Compare quality results with upstream or downstream process signals
- Investigate events using external context data
- Build repeatable analysis views for recurring questions
The key difference is that the data is no longer static. Each time the application is opened, the query runs again and loads fresh results from the source system.
Built‑In SQL Wizard
Quality Window includes a SQL Wizard that guides users through connecting to an external data source, selecting tables and fields, and defining how the data should be loaded.
The Wizard is designed for quality and process users who may not be database experts, while still allowing advanced users to define more complex queries when needed.
A full administrative guide is available here:
Download the Quality Window SQL Wizard Admin Guide
Step‑By‑Step Video Tutorial
If you prefer to learn by example, we also provide a guided video walkthrough showing how to connect to an external database and create a working Quality Window application.
Watch the SQL Wizard tutorial video
When to Talk to Us
Connecting to external data sources is powerful, but it does touch IT systems, database permissions, and data structure decisions. Many customers choose to involve Busitech early to avoid trial‑and‑error.
You should reach out if:
- You want to connect to a historian, MES, or LIMS system
- You are unsure how your data should be structured for analysis
- You want help designing a reusable analysis application
- You already own Quality Window and want to expand how you use it
Our team regularly helps customers design these integrations quickly and safely.
Get Started
If you are evaluating Quality Window, contact sales to discuss your data sources and goals.
If you are an existing customer, contact support to review your use case and next steps.
Quality Window is most valuable when it can see the full picture, not just the data that happens to live in one system.