Provisa / Provisa and Denodo
Denodo and Provisa share a premise and differ on the engine.
Denodo is centred on its own virtualization platform, a mature SQL engine with two decades of enterprise connectors and a support organization behind it. Provisa shares the premise of governed access over distributed data without duplicating it. They differ on which engine runs the query, which languages reach the model, and how small you can go.
Where each fits
| You need to… | Denodo | Provisa |
|---|---|---|
| Run BI over many distributed sources without a warehouse | ✓ Mature data virtualization; commercial optimizer; broad enterprise connector library | ✓ Same premise; execution runs in the engine you choose: embedded, Trino, DuckDB, Snowflake and others |
| Publish a unified API over distributed data | ✓ REST, OData and GraphQL published over virtual SQL views | ✓ GraphQL, SQL and Cypher as peers over one model; GraphQL is first-class instead of a published view |
| Give AI agents governed access | Platform AI features and an AI chatbot over Denodo's API | ✓ MCP server; the OAuth token maps to a role and inherits the same six access-control layers as any human user |
| Ask graph or path questions over relationships | Queried in SQL | ✓ Cypher first-class; relationships are registered and governed in the model, and they go beyond foreign keys |
| Connect governance to external catalogs and lineage tools | Catalogs can connect to Denodo; platform-native metadata management | ✓ Publishes to external catalogs; imports from your semantic layer; keeps them in sync or runs standalone |
| Change the execution engine later | Denodo's own optimizer and engine | ✓ Engine is a swappable component: Trino, DuckDB, ClickHouse, Postgres, Snowflake, Databricks, BigQuery |
| Run on-premises or air-gapped | ✓ Enterprise on-premises install; regulated-industry track record | ✓ pip install "provisa[embedded]": one wheel, no Docker, no JVM, no root |
| Deploy on a single laptop or a developer machine | Platform install or managed cloud trial | ✓ Works from a wheel; desktop installer for macOS, Linux and Windows |
Use them together
If Denodo already handles SQL virtualization over your sources, Provisa connects over JDBC and registers those views as governed tables. SQL requests pass through Denodo's optimizer as they always have.
What changes is that the same model now answers in GraphQL and Cypher too, enforces the same rules on an MCP connection, and publishes metadata to the catalog tools you may already run. You can extend it step by step and keep what works.
If you only need Denodo
Your evaluation weighs connector breadth, optimizer maturity, and an enterprise support organization with decades of regulated-industry track record. Your primary consumers speak SQL, REST, or OData. Denodo is the strong choice on its own for that profile.
If you only need Provisa
You need graph queries as a first-class language, and a SQL workaround over a graph source won't do. You want governance that holds identically on every protocol, agents included. You need to connect your existing catalog and lineage tools instead of operating everything inside one platform. Or you need the smallest possible deployment, which is a single wheel on a developer machine with no JVM.