Hi @Theron_Morgan-Brown1 and welcome to the ODK community forum 
When you get a chance plase take some time to introduce yourself here
Thank you for you interest. I did also use to directly query aggregate PostgreSQL server and I am now using Central so I had to adapt my workflows. I try different approaches, mentionned here .
Here I directly use json from cental, with a Redash tip (query result is store in a sqlite database and then you can query the result with SQL json functions) wich works pretty well.
The recent $expand option that came with central 1.2 should help as all "inner tables" are joined in the API result...
Add the ability to expand repeat groups in a single response using $expand=*. Thanks to @mattelacchiato for contributing this feature!
But now, I use an intermediate PostgreSQL database that retrieve and store all submissions from Central and transform json to database tables :
The main reason is that I integrate all the collected data in our PostgreSQL centric information system.
I will work on it in a few days to "finalize" it but for the moment it is functional and manages all our submissions over Central.
I also like matebase a lot, because of its simplicity, its dynamic community, and because it can be run as as web service on a server OR as a desktop app by simply running the jar file on a laptop.
I finally choose redash because a project needed to export charts as images and metabase did not offer it at the time.
@yanokwa ask a few hours ago on twitter what should be the next dashboard or reporting tool after GDS to integrate Central ODATA connection 
Our Google Data Studio connector just shipped and it's already my favorite way to visually explore ODK datasets. What dashboarding or reporting integration should we add next? https://t.co/JtNCHGVajo
— Yaw Anokwa, PhD (@yanokwa) June 17, 2021
Redash and/or Metabase would be great, both are opensource and should complete a full open-source suite to collect and visualize data for SQL addict like me