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Administrator Guide

Reference: WQL and RaaS Comparisons

Reference: WQL and RaaS Comparisons

Use the tables to compare how Workday Query Language (WQL) and Reports as a Service (RaaS) support the various ways you can extract data from Workday.

Feature Support Summary

Feature	Supported by WQL	Supported by RaaS
Access fields from a Global business object.	No	Yes
Use the percentile function as an aggregation operator in SELECT clauses.	No	Yes
Use the GROUP BY clause to aggregate results.	Yes	No
Paginate results.	Yes	No

Use Cases

Use Case	WQL Support	RaaS Support
Group your extract by 1 or more dimensions.	Supported. You can use the GROUP BY clause to aggregate results by various dimensions.	Not Supported.
Download the results in partitions instead of 1 large response.	Supported. You can paginate results 10,000 rows at a time using the LIMIT and OFFSET parameters.	Not Supported.
Extract data using web services.	Supported with RESTful web services.	Supported with RESTful and SOAP web services.
Dynamically change the query extract without signing in to Workday.	Supported. Because WQL requests are string values, you can change the request outside of Workday.	Supported. You can dynamically update parameters in the URL.
Persist the definition of an extract to enable collaboration.	You can save a WQL query outside of Workday.	Supported. RaaS is a Report as a Service and, as such, can persist report definitions in Workday.
Audit the extraction to identify changes and revert them as necessary.	Not Supported.	Supported. Because RaaS persists report definitions, you can track changes through the Workday audit framework.
Extract data from multiple environments without having to create or migrate reports across tenants.	Supported. You can change the request URL for WQL as needed to point to any tenant.	Not Supported. To extract a report from another tenant, you must migrate the report to that tenant.
Extract small to moderately sized result sets.	Supported. Up to 1 million rows.	Supported. Up to 1 million rows.
Extract data within time limits.	30-minute timeout for WQL requests from a Workday tenanted host. 5-minute timeout for WQL API calls from the Workday Cloud Platform (WCP) Gateway (api.workday.com).	6-hour timeout for RaaS SOAP and REST requests from a tenanted host. 5-minute timeout for RaaS API calls from the Workday Cloud Platform (WCP) Gateway (api.workday.com).
Extract results in multiple formats.	You can extract results in JSON.	Supported. You can extract results in these formats: CSV. GData. JSON. RSS. Simple XML. Workday XML.
Extract only the appropriate data for the issuing user.	Supported. WQL honors object and data-level security based on the issuing user.	Supported. RaaS honors object and data-level security based on the issuing user.
Create outbound integrations with only limited knowledge of Workday custom reports.	Supported. You don't have to understand the Workday Report Writer to use WQL. WQL is similar to standard database languages.	You must have some knowledge of Workday reporting.
Start an integration from a Workday standard report.	Supported. You can use the Convert Report to WQL report to convert Workday advanced and matrix reports to WQL.	Supported. You can copy and customize standard and advanced reports for outbound integrations.
Programmatically explore any of these items: Data sources. Fields of data sources. Data source filters.	Supported. WQL provides APIs for data sources, data source filters, and fields. To query any data sources, filters, and fields in WQL, you must have access to them in Workday.	Not Supported. Create a report definition in Workday and complete the prompts for data sources, filters, and fields.