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Administrator Guide
Last Updated: 2026-08-07
Get Started with Workday Live Data Query

Get Started with Workday Live Data Query

You might need to take additional steps to enable this feature depending on your organization's subscription service agreement. For more information, see this Community article.

Overview

Workday Live Data Query (LDQ) enables real-time SQL access from external systems to Workday's core business objects without using ETL or data replication. External clients query data within Workday on demand through a JDBC or Python driver.

Live Data Query Setup

Authentication
You can set up your LDQ connection with either of these authentication methods:
Authentication Method
Description
Setup Instructions
Integration System User (ISU)
Allows the external system to authenticate as a dedicated, non-person system account. Access to data is limited by the security permissions configured for the Integration System User (ISU), ensuring the connection can only access the specific tables and columns it is authorized to see.
User As Self
Allows the external system to read data on behalf of a Workday user. Enforces Workday's full security model, including row level controls and contextual security, based on the permissions of the user who authorizes the connection.
External Client Setup
Live Data Query offers these combinations of external clients and drivers:
External Client
Driver
Setup Instructions
DBeaver
JDBC
Python
Python
Snowflake
Python
Power BI
.mez
To download the drivers, see Live Data Query Downloads.
It’s possible to use LDQ drivers in clients other than those documented here.

Using Live Data Query

After you’ve established a data connection from the external client with the driver, you can run SQL statements to query Workday data. See Query Workday Data Using Live Data Query.

Guardrails and Limitations

  • These guardrails and limitations are subject to change:
    Maximum Value
    Query Runtime (Execution)
    30 minutes
    Query Runtime (Queueing, Execution, Data Out)
    60 minutes
    Query Concurrency (Per Tenant)
    90 queries
    Query Concurrency (Per Environment)
    100 queries
    Query Queue Length (Per Tenant)
    800 queries
    Query Queue Length (Per Environment)
    1000 queries
    Memory per Query
    20 GB
    Query Request Size (SQL Length)
    1,000,000 characters
    Query Response Size (Per Chunk)
    16 MB
    Query Response Size (Total)
    No limit
    Query Response Cells (Rows, Columns)
    No limit
  • Available objects are currently limited to Workforce and Talent. See Data Cloud Catalog.