Summary In this episode of the Data Engineering Podcast, host Tobias Macy welcomes back Shinji Kim to discuss the evolving role of semantic layers in the era of AI. As they explore the challenges of managing vast data ecosystems and providing context to data users, they delve into the significance of semantic layers for AI applications. They dive into the nuances of semantic modeling, the impact of AI on data accessibility, and the importance of business logic in semantic models. Shinji shares her insights on how SelectStar is helping teams navigate these complexities, and together they cover the future of semantic modeling as a native construct in data systems. Join them for an in-depth conversation on the evolving landscape of data engineering and its intersection with AI.

Announcements Hello and welcome to the Data Engineering Podcast, the show about modern data managementData migrations are brutal. They drag on for months—sometimes years—burning through resources and crushing team morale. Datafold's AI-powered Migration Agent changes all that. Their unique combination of AI code translation and automated data validation has helped companies complete migrations up to 10 times faster than manual approaches. And they're so confident in their solution, they'll actually guarantee your timeline in writing. Ready to turn your year-long migration into weeks? Visit dataengineeringpodcast.com/datafold today for the details.Your host is Tobias Macey and today I'm interviewing Shinji Kim about the role of semantic layers in the era of AIInterview IntroductionHow did you get involved in the area of data management?Semantic modeling gained a lot of attention ~4-5 years ago in the context of the "modern data stack". What is your motivation for revisiting that topic today?There are several overlapping concepts – "semantic layer," "metrics layer," "headless BI." How do you define these terms, and what are the key distinctions and overlaps?Do you see these concepts converging, or do they serve distinct long-term purposes?Data warehousing and business intelligence have been around for decades now. What new value does semantic modeling beyond practices like star schemas, OLAP cubes, etc.?What benefits does a semantic model provide when integrating your data platform into AI use cases?How is it different between using AI as an interface to your analytical use cases vs. powering customer facing AI applications with your data?Putting in the effort to create and maintain a set of semantic models is non-zero. What role can LLMs play in helping to propose and construct those models?For teams who have already invested in building this capability, what additional context and metadata is necessary to provide guidance to LLMs when working with their models?What's the most effective way to create a semantic layer without turning it into a massive project? There are several technologies available for building and serving these models. What are the selection criteria that you recommend for teams who are starting down this path?What are the most interesting, innovative, or unexpected ways that you have seen semantic models used?What are the most interesting, unexpected, or challenging lessons that you have learned while working with semantic modeling?When is semantic modeling the wrong choice?What do you predict for the future of semantic modeling?Contact Info LinkedInParting Question From your perspective, what is the biggest gap in the tooling or technology for data management today?Closing Announcements Thank you for listening! Don't forget to check out our other shows. Podcast.init covers the Python language, its community, and the innovative ways it is being used. The AI Engineering Podcast is your guide to the fast-moving world of building AI systems.Visit the site to subscribe to the show, sign up for the mailing list, and read the show notes.If you've learned something or tried out a project from the show then tell us about it! Email [email protected] with your story.Links SelectStarSun MicrosystemsMarkov Chain Monte CarloSemantic ModelingSemantic LayerMetrics LayerHeadless BICubePodcast EpisodeAtScaleStar SchemaData VaultOLAP CubeRAG == Retrieval Augmented GenerationAI Engineering Podcast EpisodeKNN == K-Nearest NeighbersHNSW == Hierarchical Navigable Small Worlddbt Metrics LayerSoda DataLookMLHexPowerBITableauSemantic View (Snowflake)Databricks GenieSnowflake Cortex AnalystMalloyThe intro and outro music is from The Hug by The Freak Fandango Orchestra / CC BY-SA

Summary In this episode of the Data Engineering Podcast Tulika Bhatt, a senior software engineer at Netflix, talks about her experiences with large-scale data processing and the future of data engineering technologies. Tulika shares her journey into the data engineering field, discussing her work at BlackRock and Verizon before joining Netflix, and explains the challenges and innovations involved in managing Netflix's impression data for personalization and user experience. She highlights the importance of balancing off-the-shelf solutions with custom-built systems using technologies like Spark, Flink, and Iceberg, and delves into the complexities of ensuring data quality and observability in high-speed environments, including robust alerting strategies and semantic data auditing.

Announcements Hello and welcome to the Data Engineering Podcast, the show about modern data managementData migrations are brutal. They drag on for months—sometimes years—burning through resources and crushing team morale. Datafold's AI-powered Migration Agent changes all that. Their unique combination of AI code translation and automated data validation has helped companies complete migrations up to 10 times faster than manual approaches. And they're so confident in their solution, they'll actually guarantee your timeline in writing. Ready to turn your year-long migration into weeks? Visit dataengineeringpodcast.com/datafold today for the details.Your host is Tobias Macey and today I'm interviewing Tulika Bhatt about her experiences working on large scale data processing and her insights on the future trajectory of the supporting technologiesInterview IntroductionHow did you get involved in the area of data management?Can you start by outlining the ways that operating at large scale change the ways that you need to think about the design of data systems?When dealing with small-scale data systems it can be feasible to have manual processes. What are the elements of large scal data systems that demand autopmation?How can those large-scale automation principles be down-scaled to the systems that the rest of the world are operating?A perennial problem in data engineering is that of data quality. The past 4 years has seen a significant growth in the number of tools and practices available for automating the validation and verification of data. In your experience working with high volume data flows, what are the elements of data validation that are still unsolved?Generative AI has taken the world by storm over the past couple years. How has that changed the ways that you approach your daily work?What do you see as the future realities of working with data across various axes of large scale, real-time, etc.?What are the most interesting, innovative, or unexpected ways that you have seen solutions to large-scale data management designed?What are the most interesting, unexpected, or challenging lessons that you have learned while working on data management across axes of scale?What are the ways that you are thinking about the future trajectory of your work??Contact Info LinkedInParting Question From your perspective, what is the biggest gap in the tooling or technology for data management today?Closing Announcements Thank you for listening! Don't forget to check out our other shows. Podcast.init covers the Python language, its community, and the innovative ways it is being used. The AI Engineering Podcast is your guide to the fast-moving world of building AI systems.Visit the site to subscribe to the show, sign up for the mailing list, and read the show notes.If you've learned something or tried out a project from the show then tell us about it! Email [email protected] with your story.Links BlackRockSparkFlinkKafkaCassandraRocksDBNetflix Maestro workflow orchestratorPagerdutyIcebergThe intro and outro music is from The Hug by The Freak Fandango Orchestra / CC BY-SA

Summary In this episode of the Data Engineering Podcast Sida Shen, product manager at CelerData, talks about StarRocks, a high-performance analytical database. Sida discusses the inception of StarRocks, which was forked from Apache Doris in 2020 and evolved into a high-performance Lakehouse query engine. He explains the architectural design of StarRocks, highlighting its capabilities in handling high concurrency and low latency queries, and its integration with open table formats like Apache Iceberg, Delta Lake, and Apache Hudi. Sida also discusses how StarRocks differentiates itself from other query engines by supporting on-the-fly joins and eliminating the need for denormalization pipelines, and shares insights into its use cases, such as customer-facing analytics and real-time data processing, as well as future directions for the platform.

Announcements Hello and welcome to the Data Engineering Podcast, the show about modern data managementData migrations are brutal. They drag on for months—sometimes years—burning through resources and crushing team morale. Datafold's AI-powered Migration Agent changes all that. Their unique combination of AI code translation and automated data validation has helped companies complete migrations up to 10 times faster than manual approaches. And they're so confident in their solution, they'll actually guarantee your timeline in writing. Ready to turn your year-long migration into weeks? Visit dataengineeringpodcast.com/datafold today for the details.Your host is Tobias Macey and today I'm interviewing Sida Shen about StarRocks, a high performance analytical database supporting shared nothing and shared data patternsInterview IntroductionHow did you get involved in the area of data management?Can you describe what StarRocks is and the story behind it?There are numerous analytical databases on the market. What are the attributes of StarRocks that differentiate it from other options?Can you describe the architecture of StarRocks?What are the "-ilities" that are foundational to the design of the system?How have the design and focus of the project evolved since it was first created?What are the tradeoffs involved in separating the communication layer from the data layers?The tiered architecture enables the shared nothing and shared data behaviors, which allows for the implementation of lakehouse patterns. What are some of the patterns that are possible due to the single interface/dual pattern nature of StarRocks?The shared data implementation has cacheing built in to accelerate interaction with datasets. What are some of the limitations/edge cases that operators and consumers should be aware of?StarRocks supports management of lakehouse tables (Iceberg, Delta, Hudi, etc.), which overlaps with use cases for Trino/Presto/Dremio/etc. What are the cases where StarRocks acts as a replacement for those systems vs. a supplement to them?The other major category of engines that StarRocks overlaps with is OLAP databases (e.g. Clickhouse, Firebolt, etc.). Why might someone use StarRocks in addition to or in place of those techologies?We would be remiss if we ignored the dominating trend of AI and the systems that support it. What is the role of StarRocks in the context of an AI application?What are the most interesting, innovative, or unexpected ways that you have seen StarRocks used?What are the most interesting, unexpected, or challenging lessons that you have learned while working on StarRocks?When is StarRocks the wrong choice?What do you have planned for the future of StarRocks?Contact Info LinkedInParting Question From your perspective, what is the biggest gap in the tooling or technology for data management today?Closing Announcements Thank you for listening! Don't forget to check out our other shows. Podcast.init covers the Python language, its community, and the innovative ways it is being used. The AI Engineering Podcast is your guide to the fast-moving world of building AI systems.Visit the site to subscribe to the show, sign up for the mailing list, and read the show notes.If you've learned something or tried out a project from the show then tell us about it! Email [email protected] with your story.Links StarRocksCelerDataApache DorisSIMD == Single Instruction Multiple DataApache IcebergClickHousePodcast EpisodeDruidFireboltPodcast EpisodeSnowflakeBigQueryTrinoDatabricksDremioData LakehouseDelta LakeApache HiveC++Cost-Based OptimizerIceberg Summit Tencent Games PresentationApache PaimonLancePodcast EpisodeDelta UniformApache ArrowStarRocks Python UDFDebeziumPodcast EpisodeThe intro and outro music is from The Hug by The Freak Fandango Orchestra / CC BY-SA

Summary In this episode of the Data Engineering Podcast Derek Collison, creator of NATS and CEO of Synadia, talks about the evolution and capabilities of NATS as a multi-paradigm connectivity layer for distributed applications. Derek discusses the challenges and solutions in building distributed systems, and highlights the unique features of NATS that differentiate it from other messaging systems. He delves into the architectural decisions behind NATS, including its ability to handle high-speed global microservices, support for edge computing, and integration with Jetstream for data persistence, and explores the role of NATS in modern data management and its use cases in industries like manufacturing and connected vehicles.

Announcements Hello and welcome to the Data Engineering Podcast, the show about modern data managementData migrations are brutal. They drag on for months—sometimes years—burning through resources and crushing team morale. Datafold's AI-powered Migration Agent changes all that. Their unique combination of AI code translation and automated data validation has helped companies complete migrations up to 10 times faster than manual approaches. And they're so confident in their solution, they'll actually guarantee your timeline in writing. Ready to turn your year-long migration into weeks? Visit dataengineeringpodcast.com/datafold today for the details.Your host is Tobias Macey and today I'm interviewing Derek Collison about NATS, a multi-paradigm connectivity layer for distributed applications.Interview IntroductionHow did you get involved in the area of data management?Can you describe what NATS is and the story behind it?How have your experiences in past roles (cloud foundry, TIBCO messaging systems) informed the core principles of NATS?What other sources of inspiration have you drawn on in the design and evolution of NATS? (e.g. Kafka, RabbitMQ, etc.)There are several patterns and abstractions that NATS can support, many of which overlap with other well-regarded technologies. When designing a system or service, what are the heuristics that should be used to determine whether NATS should act as a replacement or addition to those capabilities? (e.g. considerations of scale, speed, ecosystem compatibility, etc.)There is often a divide in the technologies and architecture used between operational/user-facing applications and data systems. How does the unification of multiple messaging patterns in NATS shift the ways that teams think about the relationship between these use cases?How does the shared communication layer of NATS with multiple protocol and pattern adaptaters reduce the need to replicate data and logic across application and data layers?Can you describe how the core NATS system is architected?How have the design and goals of NATS evolved since you first started working on it?In the time since you first began writing NATS (~2012) there have been several evolutionary stages in both application and data implementation patterns. How have those shifts influenced the direction of the NATS project and its ecosystem?For teams who have an existing architecture, what are some of the patterns for adoption of NATS that allow them to augment or migrate their capabilities?What are some of the ecosystem investments that you and your team have made to ease the adoption and integration of NATS?What are the most interesting, innovative, or unexpected ways that you have seen NATS used?What are the most interesting, unexpected, or challenging lessons that you have learned while working on NATS?When is NATS the wrong choice?What do you have planned for the future of NATS?Contact Info GitHubLinkedInParting Question From your perspective, what is the biggest gap in the tooling or technology for data management today?Closing Announcements Thank you for listening! Don't forget to check out our other shows. Podcast.init covers the Python language, its community, and the innovative ways it is being used. The AI Engineering Podcast is your guide to the fast-moving world of building AI systems.Visit the site to subscribe to the show, sign up for the mailing list, and read the show notes.If you've learned something or tried out a project from the show then tell us about it! Email [email protected] with your story.Links NATSNATS JetStreamSynadiaCloud FoundryTIBCOApplied Physics Lab - Johns Hopkins UniversityCray SupercomputerRVCM Certified MessagingTIBCO ZMSIBM MQJMS == Java Message ServiceRabbitMQMongoDBNodeJSRedisAMQP == Advanced Message Queueing ProtocolPub/Sub PatternCircuit Breaker PatternZero MQAkamaiFastlyCDN == Content Delivery NetworkAt Most OnceAt Least OnceExactly OnceAWS KinesisMemcachedSQSSegmentRudderstackPodcast EpisodeDLQ == Dead Letter QueueMQTT == Message Queueing Telemetry TransportNATS Kafka Bridge10BaseT NetworkWeb AssemblyRedPandaPodcast EpisodePulsar FunctionsmTLSAuthZ (Authorization)AuthN (Authentication)NATS Auth CalloutsOPA == Open Policy AgentRAG == Retrieval Augmented GenerationAI Engineering Podcast EpisodeHome AssistantPodcast.init EpisodeTailscaleOllamaCDC == Change Data CapturegRPCThe intro and outro music is from The Hug by The Freak Fandango Orchestra / CC BY-SA

Summary In this episode of the Data Engineering Podcast Viktor Kessler, co-founder of Vakmo, talks about the architectural patterns in the lake house enabled by a fast and feature-rich Iceberg catalog. Viktor shares his journey from data warehouses to developing the open-source project, Lakekeeper, an Apache Iceberg REST catalog written in Rust that facilitates building lake houses with essential components like storage, compute, and catalog management. He discusses the importance of metadata in making data actionable, the evolution of data catalogs, and the challenges and innovations in the space, including integration with OpenFGA for fine-grained access control and managing data across formats and compute engines.

Announcements Hello and welcome to the Data Engineering Podcast, the show about modern data managementData migrations are brutal. They drag on for months—sometimes years—burning through resources and crushing team morale. Datafold's AI-powered Migration Agent changes all that. Their unique combination of AI code translation and automated data validation has helped companies complete migrations up to 10 times faster than manual approaches. And they're so confident in their solution, they'll actually guarantee your timeline in writing. Ready to turn your year-long migration into weeks? Visit dataengineeringpodcast.com/datafold today for the details.Your host is Tobias Macey and today I'm interviewing Viktor Kessler about architectural patterns in the lakehouse that are unlocked by a fast and feature-rich Iceberg catalogInterview IntroductionHow did you get involved in the area of data management?Can you describe what LakeKeeper is and the story behind it? What is the core of the problem that you are addressing?There has been a lot of activity in the catalog space recently. What are the driving forces that have highlighted the need for a better metadata catalog in the data lake/distributed data ecosystem?How would you characterize the feature sets/problem spaces that different entrants are focused on addressing?Iceberg as a table format has gained a lot of attention and adoption across the data ecosystem. The REST catalog format has opened the door for numerous implementations. What are the opportunities for innovation and improving user experience in that space?What is the role of the catalog in managing security and governance? (AuthZ, auditing, etc.)What are the channels for propagating identity and permissions to compute engines? (how do you avoid head-scratching about permission denied situations)Can you describe how LakeKeeper is implemented?How have the design and goals of the project changed since you first started working on it?For someone who has an existing set of Iceberg tables and catalog, what does the migration process look like?What new workflows or capabilities does LakeKeeper enable for data teams using Iceberg tables across one or more compute frameworks?What are the most interesting, innovative, or unexpected ways that you have seen LakeKeeper used?What are the most interesting, unexpected, or challenging lessons that you have learned while working on LakeKeeper?When is LakeKeeper the wrong choice?What do you have planned for the future of LakeKeeper?Contact Info LinkedInParting Question From your perspective, what is the biggest gap in the tooling or technology for data management today?Closing Announcements Thank you for listening! Don't forget to check out our other shows. Podcast.init covers the Python language, its community, and the innovative ways it is being used. The AI Engineering Podcast is your guide to the fast-moving world of building AI systems.Visit the site to subscribe to the show, sign up for the mailing list, and read the show notes.If you've learned something or tried out a project from the show then tell us about it! Email [email protected] with your story.Links LakeKeeperSAPMicrosoft AccessMicrosoft ExcelApache IcebergPodcast EpisodeIceberg REST CatalogPyIcebergSparkTrinoDremioHive MetastoreHadoopNATSPolarsDuckDBPodcast EpisodeDataFusionAtlanPodcast EpisodeOpen MetadataPodcast EpisodeApache AtlasOpenFGAHudiPodcast EpisodeDelta LakePodcast EpisodeLance Table FormatPodcast EpisodeUnity CatalogPolaris CatalogApache GravitinoPodcast Episode KeycloakOpen Policy Agent (OPA)Apache RangerApache NiFiThe intro and outro music is from The Hug by The Freak Fandango Orchestra / CC BY-SA

Summary In this episode of the Data Engineering Podcast Jeremy Edberg, CEO of DBOS, about durable execution and its impact on designing and implementing business logic for data systems. Jeremy explains how DBOS's serverless platform and orchestrator provide local resilience and reduce operational overhead, ensuring exactly-once execution in distributed systems through the use of the Transact library. He discusses the importance of version management in long-running workflows and how DBOS simplifies system design by reducing infrastructure needs like queues and CI pipelines, making it beneficial for data pipelines, AI workloads, and agentic AI.

Announcements Hello and welcome to the Data Engineering Podcast, the show about modern data managementData migrations are brutal. They drag on for months—sometimes years—burning through resources and crushing team morale. Datafold's AI-powered Migration Agent changes all that. Their unique combination of AI code translation and automated data validation has helped companies complete migrations up to 10 times faster than manual approaches. And they're so confident in their solution, they'll actually guarantee your timeline in writing. Ready to turn your year-long migration into weeks? Visit dataengineeringpodcast.com/datafold today for the details.Your host is Tobias Macey and today I'm interviewing Jeremy Edberg about durable execution and how it influences the design and implementation of business logicInterview IntroductionHow did you get involved in the area of data management?Can you describe what DBOS is and the story behind it?What is durable execution?What are some of the notable ways that inclusion of durable execution in an application architecture changes the ways that the rest of the application is implemented? (e.g. error handling, logic flow, etc.)Many data pipelines involve complex, multi-step workflows. How does DBOS simplify the creation and management of resilient data pipelines? How does durable execution impact the operational complexity of data management systems?One of the complexities in durable execution is managing code/data changes to workflows while existing executions are still processing. What are some of the useful patterns for addressing that challenge and how does DBOS help?Can you describe how DBOS is architected?How have the design and goals of the system changed since you first started working on it?What are the characteristics of Postgres that make it suitable for the persistence mechanism of DBOS?What are the guiding principles that you rely on to determine the boundaries between the open source and commercial elements of DBOS?What are the most interesting, innovative, or unexpected ways that you have seen DBOS used?What are the most interesting, unexpected, or challenging lessons that you have learned while working on DBOS?When is DBOS the wrong choice?What do you have planned for the future of DBOS?Contact Info LinkedInParting Question From your perspective, what is the biggest gap in the tooling or technology for data management today?Closing Announcements Thank you for listening! Don't forget to check out our other shows. Podcast.init covers the Python language, its community, and the innovative ways it is being used. The AI Engineering Podcast is your guide to the fast-moving world of building AI systems.Visit the site to subscribe to the show, sign up for the mailing list, and read the show notes.If you've learned something or tried out a project from the show then tell us about it! Email [email protected] with your story.Links DBOSExactly Once SemanticsTemporalSempahorePostgresDBOS TransactPython Typescript Idempotency KeysAgentic AIState MachineYugabyteDBPodcast EpisodeCockroachDBSupabaseNeonPodcast EpisodeAirflowThe intro and outro music is from The Hug by The Freak Fandango Orchestra / CC BY-SA

Summary In this episode of the Data Engineering Podcast Roman Gershman, CTO and founder of Dragonfly DB, explores the development and impact of high-speed in-memory databases. Roman shares his experience creating a more efficient alternative to Redis, focusing on performance gains, scalability, and cost efficiency, while addressing limitations such as high throughput and low latency scenarios. He explains how Dragonfly DB solves operational complexities for users and delves into its technical aspects, including maintaining compatibility with Redis while innovating on memory efficiency. Roman discusses the importance of cost efficiency and operational simplicity in driving adoption and shares insights on the broader ecosystem of in-memory data stores, future directions like SSD tiering and vector search capabilities, and the lessons learned from building a new database engine.

Announcements Hello and welcome to the Data Engineering Podcast, the show about modern data managementData migrations are brutal. They drag on for months—sometimes years—burning through resources and crushing team morale. Datafold's AI-powered Migration Agent changes all that. Their unique combination of AI code translation and automated data validation has helped companies complete migrations up to 10 times faster than manual approaches. And they're so confident in their solution, they'll actually guarantee your timeline in writing. Ready to turn your year-long migration into weeks? Visit dataengineeringpodcast.com/datafold today for the details.Your host is Tobias Macey and today I'm interviewing Roman Gershman about building a high-speed in-memory database and the impact of the performance gains on data applicationsInterview IntroductionHow did you get involved in the area of data management?Can you describe what DragonflyDB is and the story behind it?What is the core problem/use case that is solved by making a "faster Redis"?The other major player in the high performance key/value database space is Aerospike. What are the heuristics that an engineer should use to determine whether to use that vs. Dragonfly/Redis?Common use cases for Redis involve application caches and queueing (e.g. Celery/RQ). What are some of the other applications that you have seen Redis/Dragonfly used for, particularly in data engineering use cases?There is a piece of tribal wisdom that it takes 10 years for a database to iron out all of the kinks. At the same time, there have been substantial investments in commoditizing the underlying components of database engines. Can you describe how you approached the implementation of DragonflyDB to arive at a functional and reliable implementation?What are the architectural elements that contribute to the performance and scalability benefits of Dragonfly?How have the design and goals of the system changed since you first started working on it?For teams who migrate from Redis to Dragonfly, beyond the cost savings what are some of the ways that it changes the ways that they think about their overall system design?What are the most interesting, innovative, or unexpected ways that you have seen Dragonfly used?What are the most interesting, unexpected, or challenging lessons that you have learned while working on DragonflyDB?When is DragonflyDB the wrong choice?What do you have planned for the future of DragonflyDB?Contact Info GitHubLinkedInParting Question From your perspective, what is the biggest gap in the tooling or technology for data management today?Closing Announcements Thank you for listening! Don't forget to check out our other shows. Podcast.init covers the Python language, its community, and the innovative ways it is being used. The AI Engineering Podcast is your guide to the fast-moving world of building AI systems.Visit the site to subscribe to the show, sign up for the mailing list, and read the show notes.If you've learned something or tried out a project from the show then tell us about it! Email [email protected] with your story.Links DragonflyDBRedisElasticacheValKeyAerospikeLaravelSidekiqCelerySeastar FrameworkShared-Nothing Architectureio_uringmidi-redisDunning-Kruger EffectRustThe intro and outro music is from The Hug by The Freak Fandango Orchestra / CC BY-SA

Summary In this episode of the Data Engineering Podcast Sean Knapp, CEO of Ascend.io, explores the intersection of AI and data engineering. He discusses the evolution of data engineering and the role of AI in automating processes, alleviating burdens on data engineers, and enabling them to focus on complex tasks and innovation. The conversation covers the challenges and opportunities presented by AI, including the need for intelligent tooling and its potential to streamline data engineering processes. Sean and Tobias also delve into the impact of generative AI on data engineering, highlighting its ability to accelerate development, improve governance, and enhance productivity, while also noting the current limitations and future potential of AI in the field.

Announcements Hello and welcome to the Data Engineering Podcast, the show about modern data managementData migrations are brutal. They drag on for months—sometimes years—burning through resources and crushing team morale. Datafold's AI-powered Migration Agent changes all that. Their unique combination of AI code translation and automated data validation has helped companies complete migrations up to 10 times faster than manual approaches. And they're so confident in their solution, they'll actually guarantee your timeline in writing. Ready to turn your year-long migration into weeks? Visit dataengineeringpodcast.com/datafold today for the details. Your host is Tobias Macey and today I'm interviewing Sean Knapp about how Ascend is incorporating AI into their platform to help you keep up with the rapid rate of changeInterview IntroductionHow did you get involved in the area of data management?Can you describe what Ascend is and the story behind it?The last time we spoke was August of 2022. What are the most notable or interesting evolutions in your platform since then?In that same time "AI" has taken up all of the oxygen in the data ecosystem. How has that impacted the ways that you and your customers think about their priorities?The introduction of AI as an API has caused many organizations to try and leap-frog their data maturity journey and jump straight to building with advanced capabilities. How is that impacting the pressures and priorities felt by data teams?At the same time that AI-focused product goals are straining data teams capacities, AI also has the potential to act as an accelerator to their work. What are the roadblocks/speedbumps that are in the way of that capability?Many data teams are incorporating AI tools into parts of their workflow, but it can be clunky and cumbersome. How are you thinking about the fundamental changes in how your platform works with AI at its center?Can you describe the technical architecture that you have evolved toward that allows for AI to drive the experience rather than being a bolt-on?What are the concrete impacts that these new capabilities have on teams who are using Ascend?What are the most interesting, innovative, or unexpected ways that you have seen Ascend + AI used?What are the most interesting, unexpected, or challenging lessons that you have learned while working on incorporating AI into the core of Ascend?When is Ascend the wrong choice?What do you have planned for the future of AI in Ascend?Contact Info LinkedInParting Question From your perspective, what is the biggest gap in the tooling or technology for data management today?Closing Announcements Thank you for listening! Don't forget to check out our other shows. Podcast.init covers the Python language, its community, and the innovative ways it is being used. The AI Engineering Podcast is your guide to the fast-moving world of building AI systems.Visit the site to subscribe to the show, sign up for the mailing list, and read the show notes.If you've learned something or tried out a project from the show then tell us about it! Email [email protected] with your story.Links AscendCursor AI Code EditorDevinGitHub CopilotOpenAI DeepResearchS3 TablesAWS GlueAWS BedrockSnowparkCo-Intelligence: Living and Working with AI by Ethan Mollick (affiliate link)OpenAI o3The intro and outro music is from The Hug by The Freak Fandango Orchestra / CC BY-SA

Summary In this episode of the Data Engineering Podcast Pete DeJoy, co-founder and product lead at Astronomer, talks about building and managing Airflow pipelines on Astronomer and the upcoming improvements in Airflow 3. Pete shares his journey into data engineering, discusses Astronomer's contributions to the Airflow project, and highlights the critical role of Airflow in powering operational data products. He covers the evolution of Airflow, its position in the data ecosystem, and the challenges faced by data engineers, including infrastructure management and observability. The conversation also touches on the upcoming Airflow 3 release, which introduces data awareness, architectural improvements, and multi-language support, and Astronomer's observability suite, Astro Observe, which provides insights and proactive recommendations for Airflow users.

Announcements Hello and welcome to the Data Engineering Podcast, the show about modern data managementData migrations are brutal. They drag on for months—sometimes years—burning through resources and crushing team morale. Datafold's AI-powered Migration Agent changes all that. Their unique combination of AI code translation and automated data validation has helped companies complete migrations up to 10 times faster than manual approaches. And they're so confident in their solution, they'll actually guarantee your timeline in writing. Ready to turn your year-long migration into weeks? Visit dataengineeringpodcast.com/datafold today for the details.Your host is Tobias Macey and today I'm interviewing Pete DeJoy about building and managing Airflow pipelines on Astronomer and the upcoming improvements in Airflow 3Interview IntroductionCan you describe what Astronomer is and the story behind it?How would you characterize the relationship between Airflow and Astronomer?Astronomer just released your State of Airflow 2025 Report yesterday and it is the largest data engineering survey ever with over 5,000 respondents. Can you talk a bit about top level findings in the report?What about the overall growth of the Airflow project over time?How have the focus and features of Astronomer changed since it was last featured on the show in 2017?Astro Observe GA’d in early February, what does the addition of pipeline observability mean for your customers? What are other capabilities similar in scope to observability that Astronomer is looking at adding to the platform?Why is Airflow so critical in providing an elevated Observability–or cataloging, or something simlar - experience in a DataOps platform? What are the notable evolutions in the Airflow project and ecosystem in that time?What are the core improvements that are planned for Airflow 3.0?What are the most interesting, innovative, or unexpected ways that you have seen Astro used?What are the most interesting, unexpected, or challenging lessons that you have learned while working on Airflow and Astro?What do you have planned for the future of Astro/Astronomer/Airflow?Contact Info LinkedInParting Question From your perspective, what is the biggest gap in the tooling or technology for data management today?Closing Announcements Thank you for listening! Don't forget to check out our other shows. Podcast.init covers the Python language, its community, and the innovative ways it is being used. The AI Engineering Podcast is your guide to the fast-moving world of building AI systems.Visit the site to subscribe to the show, sign up for the mailing list, and read the show notes.If you've learned something or tried out a project from the show then tell us about it! Email [email protected] with your story.Links AstronomerAirflowMaxime BeaucheminMongoDBDatabricksConfluentSparkKafkaDagsterPodcast EpisodePrefectAirflow 3The Rise of the Data Engineer blog postdbtJupyter NotebookZapiercosmos library for dbt in AirflowRuffAirflow Custom OperatorSnowflakeThe intro and outro music is from The Hug by The Freak Fandango Orchestra / CC BY-SA

Summary In this episode of the Data Engineering Podcast Rajan Goyal, CEO and co-founder of Datapelago, talks about improving efficiencies in data processing by reimagining system architecture. Rajan explains the shift from hyperconverged to disaggregated and composable infrastructure, highlighting the importance of accelerated computing in modern data centers. He discusses the evolution from proprietary to open, composable stacks, emphasizing the role of open table formats and the need for a universal data processing engine, and outlines Datapelago's strategy to leverage existing frameworks like Spark and Trino while providing accelerated computing benefits.

Announcements Hello and welcome to the Data Engineering Podcast, the show about modern data managementData migrations are brutal. They drag on for months—sometimes years—burning through resources and crushing team morale. Datafold's AI-powered Migration Agent changes all that. Their unique combination of AI code translation and automated data validation has helped companies complete migrations up to 10 times faster than manual approaches. And they're so confident in their solution, they'll actually guarantee your timeline in writing. Ready to turn your year-long migration into weeks? Visit dataengineeringpodcast.com/datafold today for the details.Your host is Tobias Macey and today I'm interviewing Rajan Goyal about how to drastically improve efficiencies in data processing by re-imagining the system architectureInterview IntroductionHow did you get involved in the area of data management?Can you start by outlining the main factors that contribute to performance challenges in data lake environments?The different components of open data processing systems have evolved from different starting points with different objectives. In your experience, how has that un-planned and un-synchronized evolution of the ecosystem hindered the capabilities and adoption of open technologies?The introduction of a new cross-cutting capability (e.g. Iceberg) has typically taken a substantial amount of time to gain support across different engines and ecosystems. What do you see as the point of highest leverage to improve the capabilities of the entire stack with the least amount of co-ordination?What was the motivating insight that led you to invest in the technology that powers Datapelago?Can you describe the system design of Datapelago and how it integrates with existing data engines?The growth in the generation and application of unstructured data is a notable shift in the work being done by data teams. What are the areas of overlap in the fundamental nature of data (whether structured, semi-structured, or unstructured) that you are able to exploit to bridge the processing gap?What are the most interesting, innovative, or unexpected ways that you have seen Datapelago used?What are the most interesting, unexpected, or challenging lessons that you have learned while working on Datapelago?When is Datapelago the wrong choice?What do you have planned for the future of Datapelago?Contact Info LinkedInParting Question From your perspective, what is the biggest gap in the tooling or technology for data management today?Links DatapelagoMIPS ArchitectureARM ArchitectureAWS NitroMellanoxNvidiaVon Neumann ArchitectureTPU == Tensor Processing UnitFPGA == Field-Programmable Gate ArraySparkTrinoIcebergPodcast EpisodeDelta LakePodcast EpisodeHudiPodcast EpisodeApache GlutenIntermediate RepresentationTuring CompletenessLLVMAmdahl's LawLSTM == Long Short-Term MemoryThe intro and outro music is from The Hug by The Freak Fandango Orchestra / CC BY-SA

Summary In this episode of the Data Engineering Podcast Gleb Mezhanskiy, CEO and co-founder of DataFold, talks about the intersection of AI and data engineering. He discusses the challenges and opportunities of integrating AI into data engineering, particularly using large language models (LLMs) to enhance productivity and reduce manual toil. The conversation covers the potential of AI to transform data engineering tasks, such as text-to-SQL interfaces and creating semantic graphs to improve data accessibility, and explores practical applications of LLMs in automating code reviews, testing, and understanding data lineage.

Announcements Hello and welcome to the Data Engineering Podcast, the show about modern data managementData migrations are brutal. They drag on for months—sometimes years—burning through resources and crushing team morale. Datafold's AI-powered Migration Agent changes all that. Their unique combination of AI code translation and automated data validation has helped companies complete migrations up to 10 times faster than manual approaches. And they're so confident in their solution, they'll actually guarantee your timeline in writing. Ready to turn your year-long migration into weeks? Visit dataengineeringpodcast.com/datafold today for the details. Your host is Tobias Macey and today I'm interviewing Gleb Mezhanskiy about Interview IntroductionHow did you get involved in the area of data management?modern data stack is deadwhere is AI in the data stack?"buy our tool to ship AI"opportunities for LLM in DE workflowContact Info LinkedInParting Question From your perspective, what is the biggest gap in the tooling or technology for data management today?Closing Announcements Thank you for listening! Don't forget to check out our other shows. Podcast.init covers the Python language, its community, and the innovative ways it is being used. The AI Engineering Podcast is your guide to the fast-moving world of building AI systems.Visit the site to subscribe to the show, sign up for the mailing list, and read the show notes.If you've learned something or tried out a project from the show then tell us about it! Email [email protected] with your story.Links DatafoldCopilotCursor IDEAI AgentsDataChatAI Engineering Podcast EpisodeMetrics LayerEmacsLangChainLangGraphCrewAIThe intro and outro music is from The Hug by The Freak Fandango Orchestra / CC BY-SA

Summary In this episode of the Data Engineering Podcast Bartosz Mikulski talks about preparing data for AI applications. Bartosz shares his journey from data engineering to MLOps and emphasizes the importance of data testing over software development in AI contexts. He discusses the types of data assets required for AI applications, including extensive test datasets, especially in generative AI, and explains the differences in data requirements for various AI application styles. The conversation also explores the skills data engineers need to transition into AI, such as familiarity with vector databases and new data modeling strategies, and highlights the challenges of evolving AI applications, including frequent reprocessing of data when changing chunking strategies or embedding models.

Announcements Hello and welcome to the Data Engineering Podcast, the show about modern data managementData migrations are brutal. They drag on for months—sometimes years—burning through resources and crushing team morale. Datafold's AI-powered Migration Agent changes all that. Their unique combination of AI code translation and automated data validation has helped companies complete migrations up to 10 times faster than manual approaches. And they're so confident in their solution, they'll actually guarantee your timeline in writing. Ready to turn your year-long migration into weeks? Visit dataengineeringpodcast.com/datafold today for the details. Your host is Tobias Macey and today I'm interviewing Bartosz Mikulski about how to prepare data for use in AI applicationsInterview IntroductionHow did you get involved in the area of data management?Can you start by outlining some of the main categories of data assets that are needed for AI applications?How does the nature of the application change those requirements? (e.g. RAG app vs. agent, etc.)How do the different assets map to the stages of the application lifecycle?What are some of the common roles and divisions of responsibility that you see in the construction and operation of a "typical" AI application?For data engineers who are used to data warehousing/BI, what are the skills that map to AI apps?What are some of the data modeling patterns that are needed to support AI apps?chunking strategies metadata managementWhat are the new categories of data that data engineers need to manage in the context of AI applications?agent memory generation/evolution conversation history managementdata collection for fine tuningWhat are some of the notable evolutions in the space of AI applications and their patterns that have happened in the past ~1-2 years that relate to the responsibilities of data engineers?What are some of the skills gaps that teams should be aware of and identify training opportunities for?What are the most interesting, innovative, or unexpected ways that you have seen data teams address the needs of AI applications?What are the most interesting, unexpected, or challenging lessons that you have learned while working on AI applications and their reliance on data?What are some of the emerging trends that you are paying particular attention to?Contact Info WebsiteLinkedInParting Question From your perspective, what is the biggest gap in the tooling or technology for data management today?Closing Announcements Thank you for listening! Don't forget to check out our other shows. Podcast.init covers the Python language, its community, and the innovative ways it is being used. The AI Engineering Podcast is your guide to the fast-moving world of building AI systems.Visit the site to subscribe to the show, sign up for the mailing list, and read the show notes.If you've learned something or tried out a project from the show then tell us about it! Email [email protected] with your story.Links SparkRayChunking StrategiesHypothetical document embeddingsModel Fine TuningPrompt CompressionThe intro and outro music is from The Hug by The Freak Fandango Orchestra / CC BY-SA

Summary In this episode of the Data Engineering Podcast Andrew Luo, CEO of OneSchema, talks about handling CSV data in business operations. Andrew shares his background in data engineering and CRM migration, which led to the creation of OneSchema, a platform designed to automate CSV imports and improve data validation processes. He discusses the challenges of working with CSVs, including inconsistent type representation, lack of schema information, and technical complexities, and explains how OneSchema addresses these issues using multiple CSV parsers and AI for data type inference and validation. Andrew highlights the business case for OneSchema, emphasizing efficiency gains for companies dealing with large volumes of CSV data, and shares plans to expand support for other data formats and integrate AI-driven transformation packs for specific industries.

Announcements Hello and welcome to the Data Engineering Podcast, the show about modern data managementData migrations are brutal. They drag on for months—sometimes years—burning through resources and crushing team morale. Datafold's AI-powered Migration Agent changes all that. Their unique combination of AI code translation and automated data validation has helped companies complete migrations up to 10 times faster than manual approaches. And they're so confident in their solution, they'll actually guarantee your timeline in writing. Ready to turn your year-long migration into weeks? Visit dataengineeringpodcast.com/datafold today for the details. Your host is Tobias Macey and today I'm interviewing Andrew Luo about how OneSchema addresses the headaches of dealing with CSV data for your businessInterview IntroductionHow did you get involved in the area of data management?Despite the years of evolution and improvement in data storage and interchange formats, CSVs are just as prevalent as ever. What are your opinions/theories on why they are so ubiquitous?What are some of the major sources of CSV data for teams that rely on them for business and analytical processes?The most obvious challenge with CSVs is their lack of type information, but they are notorious for having numerous other problems. What are some of the other major challenges involved with using CSVs for data interchange/ingestion?Can you describe what you are building at OneSchema and the story behind it?What are the core problems that you are solving, and for whom?Can you describe how you have architected your platform to be able to manage the variety, volume, and multi-tenancy of data that you process?How have the design and goals of the product changed since you first started working on it?What are some of the major performance issues that you have encountered while dealing with CSV data at scale?What are some of the most surprising things that you have learned about CSVs in the process of building OneSchema?What are the most interesting, innovative, or unexpected ways that you have seen OneSchema used?What are the most interesting, unexpected, or challenging lessons that you have learned while working on OneSchema?When is OneSchema the wrong choice?What do you have planned for the future of OneSchema?Contact Info LinkedInParting Question From your perspective, what is the biggest gap in the tooling or technology for data management today?Closing Announcements Thank you for listening! Don't forget to check out our other shows. Podcast.init covers the Python language, its community, and the innovative ways it is being used. The AI Engineering Podcast is your guide to the fast-moving world of building AI systems.Visit the site to subscribe to the show, sign up for the mailing list, and read the show notes.If you've learned something or tried out a project from the show then tell us about it! Email [email protected] with your story.Links OneSchemaEDI == Electronic Data InterchangeUTF-8 BOM (Byte Order Mark) CharactersSOAPCSV RFCIcebergSSIS == SQL Server Integration ServicesMS AccessDatafusionJSON SchemaSFTP == Secure File Transfer ProtocolThe intro and outro music is from The Hug by The Freak Fandango Orchestra / CC BY-SA

Summary In this episode of the Data Engineering Podcast Dan Bruckner, co-founder and CTO of Tamr, talks about the application of machine learning (ML) and artificial intelligence (AI) in master data management (MDM). Dan shares his journey from working at CERN to becoming a data expert and discusses the challenges of reconciling large-scale organizational data. He explains how data silos arise from independent teams and highlights the importance of combining traditional techniques with modern AI to address the nuances of data reconciliation. Dan emphasizes the transformative potential of large language models (LLMs) in creating more natural user experiences, improving trust in AI-driven data solutions, and simplifying complex data management processes. He also discusses the balance between using AI for complex data problems and the necessity of human oversight to ensure accuracy and trust.

Announcements Hello and welcome to the Data Engineering Podcast, the show about modern data managementData migrations are brutal. They drag on for months—sometimes years—burning through resources and crushing team morale. Datafold's AI-powered Migration Agent changes all that. Their unique combination of AI code translation and automated data validation has helped companies complete migrations up to 10 times faster than manual approaches. And they're so confident in their solution, they'll actually guarantee your timeline in writing. Ready to turn your year-long migration into weeks? Visit dataengineeringpodcast.com/datafold today for the details. As a listener of the Data Engineering Podcast you clearly care about data and how it affects your organization and the world. For even more perspective on the ways that data impacts everything around us don't miss Data Citizens® Dialogues, the forward-thinking podcast brought to you by Collibra. You'll get further insights from industry leaders, innovators, and executives in the world's largest companies on the topics that are top of mind for everyone. In every episode of Data Citizens® Dialogues, industry leaders unpack data’s impact on the world; like in their episode “The Secret Sauce Behind McDonald’s Data Strategy”, which digs into how AI-driven tools can be used to support crew efficiency and customer interactions. In particular I appreciate the ability to hear about the challenges that enterprise scale businesses are tackling in this fast-moving field. The Data Citizens Dialogues podcast is bringing the data conversation to you, so start listening now! Follow Data Citizens Dialogues on Apple, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts.Your host is Tobias Macey and today I'm interviewing Dan Bruckner about the application of ML and AI techniques to the challenge of reconciling data at the scale of businessInterview IntroductionHow did you get involved in the area of data management?Can you start by giving an overview of the different ways that organizational data becomes unwieldy and needs to be consolidated and reconciled?How does that reconciliation relate to the practice of "master data management"What are the scaling challenges with the current set of practices for reconciling data?ML has been applied to data cleaning for a long time in the form of entity resolution, etc. How has the landscape evolved or matured in recent years?What (if any) transformative capabilities do LLMs introduce?What are the missing pieces/improvements that are necessary to make current AI systems usable out-of-the-box for data cleaning?What are the strategic decisions that need to be addressed when implementing ML/AI techniques in the data cleaning/reconciliation process?What are the risks involved in bringing ML to bear on data cleaning for inexperienced teams?What are the most interesting, innovative, or unexpected ways that you have seen ML techniques used in data resolution?What are the most interesting, unexpected, or challenging lessons that you have learned while working on using ML/AI in master data management?When is ML/AI the wrong choice for data cleaning/reconciliation?What are your hopes/predictions for the future of ML/AI applications in MDM and data cleaning?Contact Info LinkedInParting Question From your perspective, what is the biggest gap in the tooling or technology for data management today?Closing Announcements Thank you for listening! Don't forget to check out our other shows. Podcast.init covers the Python language, its community, and the innovative ways it is being used. The AI Engineering Podcast is your guide to the fast-moving world of building AI systems.Visit the site to subscribe to the show, sign up for the mailing list, and read the show notes.If you've learned something or tried out a project from the show then tell us about it! Email [email protected] with your story.Links TamrMaster Data ManagementCERNLHCMichael StonebrakerConway's LawExpert SystemsInformation RetrievalActive LearningThe intro and outro music is from The Hug by The Freak Fandango Orchestra / CC BY-SA

Summary In this episode of the Data Engineering Podcast Lior Barak shares his insights on developing a three-year strategic vision for data management. He discusses the importance of having a strategic plan for data, highlighting the need for data teams to focus on impact rather than just enablement. He introduces the concept of a "data vision board" and explains how it can help organizations outline their strategic vision by considering three key forces: regulation, stakeholders, and organizational goals. Lior emphasizes the importance of balancing short-term pressures with long-term strategic goals, quantifying the cost of data issues to prioritize effectively, and maintaining the strategic vision as a living document through regular reviews. He encourages data teams to shift from being enablers to impact creators and provides practical advice on implementing a data vision board, setting clear KPIs, and embracing a product mindset to create tangible business impacts through strategic data management.

Announcements Hello and welcome to the Data Engineering Podcast, the show about modern data managementIt’s 2024, why are we still doing data migrations by hand? Teams spend months—sometimes years—manually converting queries and validating data, burning resources and crushing morale. Datafold's AI-powered Migration Agent brings migrations into the modern era. Their unique combination of AI code translation and automated data validation has helped companies complete migrations up to 10 times faster than manual approaches. And they're so confident in their solution, they'll actually guarantee your timeline in writing. Ready to turn your year-long migration into weeks? Visit dataengineeringpodcast.com/datafold today to learn how Datafold can automate your migration and ensure source to target parity. Your host is Tobias Macey and today I'm interviewing Lior Barak about how to develop your three year strategic vision for dataInterview IntroductionHow did you get involved in the area of data management?Can you start by giving an outline of the types of problems that occur as a result of not developing a strategic plan for an organization's data systems?What is the format that you recommend for capturing that strategic vision?What are the types of decisions and details that you believe should be included in a vision statement?Why is a 3 year horizon beneficial? What does that scale of time encourage/discourage in the debate and decision-making process?Who are the personas that should be included in the process of developing this strategy document?Can you walk us through the steps and processes involved in developing the data vision board for an organization?What are the time-frames or milestones that should lead to revisiting and revising the strategic objectives?What are the most interesting, innovative, or unexpected ways that you have seen a data vision strategy used?What are the most interesting, unexpected, or challenging lessons that you have learned while working on data strategy development?When is a data vision board the wrong choice?What are some additional resources or practices that you recommend teams invest in as a supplement to this strategic vision exercise?Contact Info LinkedInSubstackParting Question From your perspective, what is the biggest gap in the tooling or technology for data management today?Closing Announcements Thank you for listening! Don't forget to check out our other shows. Podcast.init covers the Python language, its community, and the innovative ways it is being used. The AI Engineering Podcast is your guide to the fast-moving world of building AI systems.Visit the site to subscribe to the show, sign up for the mailing list, and read the show notes.If you've learned something or tried out a project from the show then tell us about it! Email [email protected] with your story.Links Vision Board OverviewEpisode 397: Defining A Strategy For Your Data ProductsMinto Pyramid PrincipleKPI == Key Performance IndicatorOKR == Objectives and Key ResultsPhil Jackson: Eleven Rings (affiliate link)The intro and outro music is from The Hug by The Freak Fandango Orchestra / CC BY-SA

Summary The core task of data engineering is managing the flows of data through an organization. In order to ensure those flows are executing on schedule and without error is the role of the data orchestrator. Which orchestration engine you choose impacts the ways that you architect the rest of your data platform. In this episode Hugo Lu shares his thoughts as the founder of an orchestration company on how to think about data orchestration and data platform design as we navigate the current era of data engineering.

Announcements Hello and welcome to the Data Engineering Podcast, the show about modern data managementIt’s 2024, why are we still doing data migrations by hand? Teams spend months—sometimes years—manually converting queries and validating data, burning resources and crushing morale. Datafold's AI-powered Migration Agent brings migrations into the modern era. Their unique combination of AI code translation and automated data validation has helped companies complete migrations up to 10 times faster than manual approaches. And they're so confident in their solution, they'll actually guarantee your timeline in writing. Ready to turn your year-long migration into weeks? Visit dataengineeringpodcast.com/datafold today to learn how Datafold can automate your migration and ensure source to target parity. As a listener of the Data Engineering Podcast you clearly care about data and how it affects your organization and the world. For even more perspective on the ways that data impacts everything around us don't miss Data Citizens® Dialogues, the forward-thinking podcast brought to you by Collibra. You'll get further insights from industry leaders, innovators, and executives in the world's largest companies on the topics that are top of mind for everyone. In every episode of Data Citizens® Dialogues, industry leaders unpack data’s impact on the world, from big picture questions like AI governance and data sharing to more nuanced questions like, how do we balance offense and defense in data management? In particular I appreciate the ability to hear about the challenges that enterprise scale businesses are tackling in this fast-moving field. The Data Citizens Dialogues podcast is bringing the data conversation to you, so start listening now! Follow Data Citizens Dialogues on Apple, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts.Your host is Tobias Macey and today I'm interviewing Hugo Lu about the data platform and orchestration ecosystem and how to navigate the available optionsInterview IntroductionHow did you get involved in building data platforms?Can you describe what an orchestrator is in the context of data platforms?There are many other contexts in which orchestration is necessary. What are some examples of how orchestrators have adapted (or failed to adapt) to the times?What are the core features that are necessary for an orchestrator to have when dealing with data-oriented workflows?Beyond the bare necessities, what are some of the other features and design considerations that go into building a first-class dat platform or orchestration system?There have been several generations of orchestration engines over the past several years. How would you characterize the different coarse groupings of orchestration engines across those generational boundaries?How do the characteristics of a data orchestrator influence the overarching architecture of an organization's data platform/data operations?What about the reverse?How have the cycles of ML and AI workflow requirements impacted the design requirements for data orchestrators?What are the most interesting, innovative, or unexpected ways that you have seen data orchestrators used?What are the most interesting, unexpected, or challenging lessons that you have learned while working on data orchestration?When is an orchestrator the wrong choice?What are your predictions and/or hopes for the future of data orchestration?Contact Info MediumLinkedInParting Question From your perspective, what is the biggest thing data teams are missing in the technology today?Closing Announcements Thank you for listening! Don't forget to check out our other shows. Podcast.init covers the Python language, its community, and the innovative ways it is being used. The AI Engineering Podcast is your guide to the fast-moving world of building AI systems.Visit the site to subscribe to the show, sign up for the mailing list, and read the show notes.If you've learned something or tried out a project from the show then tell us about it! Email [email protected] with your story.Links OrchestraPrevious Episode: Overview Of The State Of Data OrchestrationCronArgoCDDAGKubernetesData MeshAirflowSSIS == SQL Server Integration ServicesPentahoKettleDataVoloNiFiPodcast EpisodeDagstergRPCCoalescePodcast EpisodedbtDataHubPalantirThe intro and outro music is from The Hug by The Freak Fandango Orchestra / CC BY-SA

Summary In this episode of the Data Engineering Podcast the inimitable Max Beauchemin talks about reusability in data pipelines. The conversation explores the "write everything twice" problem, where similar pipelines are built without code reuse, and discusses the challenges of managing different SQL dialects and relational databases. Max also touches on the evolving role of data engineers, drawing parallels with front-end engineering, and suggests that generative AI could facilitate knowledge capture and distribution in data engineering. He encourages the community to share reference implementations and templates to foster collaboration and innovation, and expresses hopes for a future where code reuse becomes more prevalent.

Announcements Hello and welcome to the Data Engineering Podcast, the show about modern data managementData migrations are brutal. They drag on for months—sometimes years—burning through resources and crushing team morale. Datafold's AI-powered Migration Agent changes all that. Their unique combination of AI code translation and automated data validation has helped companies complete migrations up to 10 times faster than manual approaches. And they're so confident in their solution, they'll actually guarantee your timeline in writing. Ready to turn your year-long migration into weeks? Visit dataengineeringpodcast.com/datafold today for the details.Your host is Tobias Macey and today I'm joined again by Max Beauchemin to talk about the challenges of reusability in data pipelinesInterview IntroductionHow did you get involved in the area of data management?Can you start by sharing your current thesis on the opportunities and shortcomings of code and component reusability in the data context?What are some ways that you think about what constitutes a "component" in this context?The data ecosystem has arguably grown more varied and nuanced in recent years. At the same time, the number and maturity of tools has grown. What is your view on the current trend in productivity for data teams and practitioners?What do you see as the core impediments to building more reusable and general-purpose solutions in data engineering?How can we balance the actual needs of data consumers against their requests (whether well- or un-informed) to help increase our ability to better design our workflows for reuse?In data engineering there are two broad approaches; code-focused or SQL-focused pipelines. In principle one would think that code-focused environments would have better composability. What are you seeing as the realities in your personal experience and what you hear from other teams?When it comes to SQL dialects, dbt offers the option of Jinja macros, whereas SDF and SQLMesh offer automatic translation. There are also tools like PRQL and Malloy that aim to abstract away the underlying SQL. What are the tradeoffs across those options that help or hinder the portability of transformation logic?Which layers of the data stack/steps in the data journey do you see the greatest opportunity for improving the creation of more broadly usable abstractions/reusable elements?low/no code systems for code reuseimpact of LLMs on reusability/compositionimpact of background on industry practices (e.g. DBAs, sysadmins, analysts vs. SWE, etc.)polymorphic data models (e.g. activity schema)What are the most interesting, innovative, or unexpected ways that you have seen teams address composability and reusability of data components?What are the most interesting, unexpected, or challenging lessons that you have learned while working on data-oriented tools and utilities?What are your hopes and predictions for sharing of code and logic in the future of data engineering?Contact Info LinkedInParting Question From your perspective, what is the biggest gap in the tooling or technology for data management today?Closing Announcements Thank you for listening! Don't forget to check out our other shows. Podcast.init covers the Python language, its community, and the innovative ways it is being used. The AI Engineering Podcast is your guide to the fast-moving world of building AI systems.Visit the site to subscribe to the show, sign up for the mailing list, and read the show notes.If you've learned something or tried out a project from the show then tell us about it! Email [email protected] with your story.Links Max's Blog PostAirflowSupersetTableauLookerPowerBICohort AnalysisNextJSAirbytePodcast EpisodeFivetranPodcast EpisodeSegmentdbtSQLMeshPodcast EpisodeSparkLAMP StackPHPRelational AlgebraKnowledge GraphPython MarshmallowData Warehouse Lifecycle Toolkit (affiliate link)Entity Centric Data Modeling Blog PostAmplitudeOSACon presentationol-data-platform Tobias' team's data platform codeThe intro and outro music is from The Hug by The Freak Fandango Orchestra / CC BY-SA

Summary In this episode of the Data Engineering Podcast Sam Kleinman talks about the pivotal role of databases in software engineering. Sam shares his journey into the world of data and discusses the complexities of database selection, highlighting the trade-offs between different database architectures and how these choices affect system design, query performance, and the need for ETL processes. He emphasizes the importance of understanding specific requirements to choose the right database engine and warns against over-engineering solutions that can lead to increased complexity. Sam also touches on the tendency of engineers to move logic to the application layer due to skepticism about database longevity and advises teams to leverage database capabilities instead. Finally, he identifies a significant gap in data management tooling: the lack of easy-to-use testing tools for database interactions, highlighting the need for better testing paradigms to ensure reliability and reduce bugs in data-driven applications.

Announcements Hello and welcome to the Data Engineering Podcast, the show about modern data managementIt’s 2024, why are we still doing data migrations by hand? Teams spend months—sometimes years—manually converting queries and validating data, burning resources and crushing morale. Datafold's AI-powered Migration Agent brings migrations into the modern era. Their unique combination of AI code translation and automated data validation has helped companies complete migrations up to 10 times faster than manual approaches. And they're so confident in their solution, they'll actually guarantee your timeline in writing. Ready to turn your year-long migration into weeks? Visit dataengineeringpodcast.com/datafold today to learn how Datafold can automate your migration and ensure source to target parity. Your host is Tobias Macey and today I'm interviewing Sam Kleinman about database tradeoffs across operating environments and axes of scaleInterview IntroductionHow did you get involved in the area of data management?The database engine you use has a substantial impact on how you architect your overall system. When starting a greenfield project, what do you see as the most important factor to consider when selecting a database?points of friction introduced by database capabilitiesembedded databases (e.g. SQLite, DuckDB, LanceDB), when to use and when do they become a bottlenecksingle-node database engines (e.g. Postgres, MySQL), when are they legitimately a problemdistributed databases (e.g. CockroachDB, PlanetScale, MongoDB)polyglot storage vs. general-purpose/multimodal databasesfederated queries, benefits and limitations ease of integration vs. variability of performance and access control Contact Info LinkedInGitHubParting Question From your perspective, what is the biggest gap in the tooling or technology for data management today?Closing Announcements Thank you for listening! Don't forget to check out our other shows. Podcast.init covers the Python language, its community, and the innovative ways it is being used. The AI Engineering Podcast is your guide to the fast-moving world of building AI systems.Visit the site to subscribe to the show, sign up for the mailing list, and read the show notes.If you've learned something or tried out a project from the show then tell us about it! Email [email protected] with your story.Links MongoDBNeonPodcast EpisodeGlareDBNoSQLS3 Conditional WriteEvent driven architectureCockroachDBCouchbaseCassandraThe intro and outro music is from The Hug by The Freak Fandango Orchestra / CC BY-SA

Summary In this episode of the Data Engineering Podcast, Anna Geller talks about the integration of code and UI-driven interfaces for data orchestration. Anna defines data orchestration as automating the coordination of workflow nodes that interact with data across various business functions, discussing how it goes beyond ETL and analytics to enable real-time data processing across different internal systems. She explores the challenges of using existing scheduling tools for data-specific workflows, highlighting limitations and anti-patterns, and discusses Kestra's solution, a low-code orchestration platform that combines code-driven flexibility with UI-driven simplicity. Anna delves into Kestra's architectural design, API-first approach, and pluggable infrastructure, and shares insights on balancing UI and code-driven workflows, the challenges of open-core business models, and innovative user applications of Kestra's platform.

Announcements Hello and welcome to the Data Engineering Podcast, the show about modern data managementData migrations are brutal. They drag on for months—sometimes years—burning through resources and crushing team morale. Datafold's AI-powered Migration Agent changes all that. Their unique combination of AI code translation and automated data validation has helped companies complete migrations up to 10 times faster than manual approaches. And they're so confident in their solution, they'll actually guarantee your timeline in writing. Ready to turn your year-long migration into weeks? Visit dataengineeringpodcast.com/datafold today for the details.As a listener of the Data Engineering Podcast you clearly care about data and how it affects your organization and the world. For even more perspective on the ways that data impacts everything around us you should listen to Data Citizens® Dialogues, the forward-thinking podcast from the folks at Collibra. You'll get further insights from industry leaders, innovators, and executives in the world's largest companies on the topics that are top of mind for everyone. They address questions around AI governance, data sharing, and working at global scale. In particular I appreciate the ability to hear about the challenges that enterprise scale businesses are tackling in this fast-moving field. While data is shaping our world, Data Citizens Dialogues is shaping the conversation. Subscribe to Data Citizens Dialogues on Apple, Spotify, Youtube, or wherever you get your podcasts.Your host is Tobias Macey and today I'm interviewing Anna Geller about incorporating both code and UI driven interfaces for data orchestrationInterview IntroductionHow did you get involved in the area of data management?Can you start by sharing a definition of what constitutes "data orchestration"?There are many orchestration and scheduling systems that exist in other contexts (e.g. CI/CD systems, Kubernetes, etc.). Those are often adapted to data workflows because they already exist in the organizational context. What are the anti-patterns and limitations that approach introduces in data workflows?What are the problems that exist in the opposite direction of using data orchestrators for CI/CD, etc.?Data orchestrators have been around for decades, with many different generations and opinions about how and by whom they are used. What do you see as the main motivation for UI vs. code-driven workflows?What are the benefits of combining code-driven and UI-driven capabilities in a single orchestrator?What constraints does it necessitate to allow for interoperability between those modalities?Data Orchestrators need to integrate with many external systems. How does Kestra approach building integrations and ensure governance for all their underlying configurations?Managing workflows at scale across teams can be challenging in terms of providing structure and visibility of dependencies across workflows and teams. What features does Kestra offer so that all pipelines and teams stay organised?What are

Summary The challenges of integrating all of the tools in the modern data stack has led to a new generation of tools that focus on a fully integrated workflow. At the same time, there have been many approaches to how much of the workflow is driven by code vs. not. Burak Karakan is of the opinion that a fully integrated workflow that is driven entirely by code offers a beneficial and productive means of generating useful analytical outcomes. In this episode he shares how Bruin builds on those opinions and how you can use it to build your own analytics without having to cobble together a suite of tools with conflicting abstractions.

Announcements Hello and welcome to the Data Engineering Podcast, the show about modern data managementImagine catching data issues before they snowball into bigger problems. That’s what Datafold’s new Monitors do. With automatic monitoring for cross-database data diffs, schema changes, key metrics, and custom data tests, you can catch discrepancies and anomalies in real time, right at the source. Whether it’s maintaining data integrity or preventing costly mistakes, Datafold Monitors give you the visibility and control you need to keep your entire data stack running smoothly. Want to stop issues before they hit production? Learn more at dataengineeringpodcast.com/datafold today!Your host is Tobias Macey and today I'm interviewing Burak Karakan about the benefits of building code-only data systemsInterview IntroductionHow did you get involved in the area of data management?Can you describe what Bruin is and the story behind it?Who is your target audience?There are numerous tools that address the ETL workflow for analytical data. What are the pain points that you are focused on for your target users?How does a code-only approach to data pipelines help in addressing the pain points of analytical workflows?How might it act as a limiting factor for organizational involvement?Can you describe how Bruin is designed?How have the design and scope of Bruin evolved since you first started working on it?You call out the ability to mix SQL and Python for transformation pipelines. What are the components that allow for that functionality?What are some of the ways that the combination of Python and SQL improves ergonomics of transformation workflows?What are the key features of Bruin that help to streamline the efforts of organizations building analytical systems?Can you describe the workflow of someone going from source data to warehouse and dashboard using Bruin and Ingestr?What are the opportunities for contributions to Bruin and Ingestr to expand their capabilities?What are the most interesting, innovative, or unexpected ways that you have seen Bruin and Ingestr used?What are the most interesting, unexpected, or challenging lessons that you have learned while working on Bruin?When is Bruin the wrong choice?What do you have planned for the future of Bruin?Contact Info LinkedInParting Question From your perspective, what is the biggest gap in the tooling or technology for data management today?Closing Announcements Thank you for listening! Don't forget to check out our other shows. Podcast.init covers the Python language, its community, and the innovative ways it is being used. The AI Engineering Podcast is your guide to the fast-moving world of building AI systems.Visit the site to subscribe to the show, sign up for the mailing list, and read the show notes.If you've learned something or tried out a project from the show then tell us about it! Email [email protected] with your story.Links BruinFivetranStitchIngestrBruin CLIMeltanoSQLGlotdbtSQLMeshPodcast EpisodeSDFPodcast EpisodeAirflowDagsterSnowparkAtlanEvidenceThe intro and outro music is from The Hug by The Freak Fandango Orchestra / CC BY-SA

Summary In this episode of the Data Engineering Podcast, the creators of Feldera talk about their incremental compute engine designed for continuous computation of data, machine learning, and AI workloads. The discussion covers the concept of incremental computation, the origins of Feldera, and its unique ability to handle both streaming and batch data seamlessly. The guests explore Feldera's architecture, applications in real-time machine learning and AI, and challenges in educating users about incremental computation. They also discuss the balance between open-source and enterprise offerings, and the broader implications of incremental computation for the future of data management, predicting a shift towards unified systems that handle both batch and streaming data efficiently.

Announcements Hello and welcome to the Data Engineering Podcast, the show about modern data managementImagine catching data issues before they snowball into bigger problems. That’s what Datafold’s new Monitors do. With automatic monitoring for cross-database data diffs, schema changes, key metrics, and custom data tests, you can catch discrepancies and anomalies in real time, right at the source. Whether it’s maintaining data integrity or preventing costly mistakes, Datafold Monitors give you the visibility and control you need to keep your entire data stack running smoothly. Want to stop issues before they hit production? Learn more at dataengineeringpodcast.com/datafold today!As a listener of the Data Engineering Podcast you clearly care about data and how it affects your organization and the world. For even more perspective on the ways that data impacts everything around us you should listen to Data Citizens® Dialogues, the forward-thinking podcast from the folks at Collibra. You'll get further insights from industry leaders, innovators, and executives in the world's largest companies on the topics that are top of mind for everyone. They address questions around AI governance, data sharing, and working at global scale. In particular I appreciate the ability to hear about the challenges that enterprise scale businesses are tackling in this fast-moving field. While data is shaping our world, Data Citizens Dialogues is shaping the conversation. Subscribe to Data Citizens Dialogues on Apple, Spotify, Youtube, or wherever you get your podcasts.Your host is Tobias Macey and today I'm interviewing Leonid Ryzhyk, Lalith Suresh, and Mihai Budiu about Feldera, an incremental compute engine for continous computation of data, ML, and AI workloadsInterview IntroductionCan you describe what Feldera is and the story behind it?DBSP (the theory behind Feldera) has won multiple awards from the database research community. Can you explain what it is and how it solves the incremental computation problem?Depending on which angle you look at it, Feldera has attributes of data warehouses, federated query engines, and stream processors. What are the unique use cases that Feldera is designed to address?In what situations would you replace another technology with Feldera?When is it an additive technology?Can you describe the architecture of Feldera?How have the design and scope evolved since you first started working on it?What are the state storage interfaces available in Feldera?What are the opportunities for integrating with or building on top of open table formats like Iceberg, Lance, Hudi, etc.?Can you describe a typical workflow for an engineer building with Feldera?You advertise Feldera's utility in ML and AI use cases in addition to data management. What are the features that make it conducive to those applications?What is your philosophy toward the community growth and engagement with the open source aspects of Feldera and how you're balancing that with sustainability of the project and business?What are the most interesting, innovative, or unexpected ways that you have seen Feldera used?What are the most interesting, unexpected, or challenging lessons that

Summary Gleb Mezhanskiy, CEO and co-founder of DataFold, joins Tobias Macey to discuss the challenges and innovations in data migrations. Gleb shares his experiences building and scaling data platforms at companies like Autodesk and Lyft, and how these experiences inspired the creation of DataFold to address data quality issues across teams. He outlines the complexities of data migrations, including common pitfalls such as technical debt and the importance of achieving parity between old and new systems. Gleb also discusses DataFold's innovative use of AI and large language models (LLMs) to automate translation and reconciliation processes in data migrations, reducing time and effort required for migrations. Announcements Hello and welcome to the Data Engineering Podcast, the show about modern data managementImagine catching data issues before they snowball into bigger problems. That’s what Datafold’s new Monitors do. With automatic monitoring for cross-database data diffs, schema changes, key metrics, and custom data tests, you can catch discrepancies and anomalies in real time, right at the source. Whether it’s maintaining data integrity or preventing costly mistakes, Datafold Monitors give you the visibility and control you need to keep your entire data stack running smoothly. Want to stop issues before they hit production? Learn more at dataengineeringpodcast.com/datafold today!Your host is Tobias Macey and today I'm welcoming back Gleb Mezhanskiy to talk about Datafold's experience bringing AI to bear on the problem of migrating your data stackInterview IntroductionHow did you get involved in the area of data management?Can you describe what the Data Migration Agent is and the story behind it?What is the core problem that you are targeting with the agent?What are the biggest time sinks in the process of database and tooling migration that teams run into?Can you describe the architecture of your agent?What was your selection and evaluation process for the LLM that you are using?What were some of the main unknowns that you had to discover going into the project?What are some of the evolutions in the ecosystem that occurred either during the development process or since your initial launch that have caused you to second-guess elements of the design?In terms of SQL translation there are libraries such as SQLGlot and the work being done with SDF that aim to address that through AST parsing and subsequent dialect generation. What are the ways that approach is insufficient in the context of a platform migration?How does the approach you are taking with the combination of data-diffing and automated translation help build confidence in the migration target?What are the most interesting, innovative, or unexpected ways that you have seen the Data Migration Agent used?What are the most interesting, unexpected, or challenging lessons that you have learned while working on building an AI powered migration assistant?When is the data migration agent the wrong choice?What do you have planned for the future of applications of AI at Datafold?Contact Info LinkedInParting Question From your perspective, what is the biggest gap in the tooling or technology for data management today?Closing Announcements Thank you for listening! Don't forget to check out our other shows. Podcast.init covers the Python language, its community, and the innovative ways it is being used. The AI Engineering Podcast is your guide to the fast-moving world of building AI systems.Visit the site to subscribe to the show, sign up for the mailing list, and read the show notes.If you've learned something or tried out a project from the show then tell us about it! Email [email protected] with your story.Links DatafoldDatafold Migration AgentDatafold data-diffDatafold Reconciliation Podcast EpisodeSQLGlotLark parserClaude 3.5 SonnetLookerPodcast EpisodeThe intro and outro music is from The Hug by The Freak Fandango Orchestra / CC BY-SA

Summary The rapid growth of generative AI applications has prompted a surge of investment in vector databases. While there are numerous engines available now, Lance is designed to integrate with data lake and lakehouse architectures. In this episode Weston Pace explains the inner workings of the Lance format for table definitions and file storage, and the optimizations that they have made to allow for fast random access and efficient schema evolution. In addition to integrating well with data lakes, Lance is also a first-class participant in the Arrow ecosystem, making it easy to use with your existing ML and AI toolchains. This is a fascinating conversation about a technology that is focused on expanding the range of options for working with vector data. Announcements Hello and welcome to the Data Engineering Podcast, the show about modern data managementImagine catching data issues before they snowball into bigger problems. That’s what Datafold’s new Monitors do. With automatic monitoring for cross-database data diffs, schema changes, key metrics, and custom data tests, you can catch discrepancies and anomalies in real time, right at the source. Whether it’s maintaining data integrity or preventing costly mistakes, Datafold Monitors give you the visibility and control you need to keep your entire data stack running smoothly. Want to stop issues before they hit production? Learn more at dataengineeringpodcast.com/datafold today!Your host is Tobias Macey and today I'm interviewing Weston Pace about the Lance file and table format for column-oriented vector storageInterview IntroductionHow did you get involved in the area of data management?Can you describe what Lance is and the story behind it?What are the core problems that Lance is designed to solve?What is explicitly out of scope?The README mentions that it is straightforward to convert to Lance from Parquet. What is the motivation for this compatibility/conversion support?What formats does Lance replace or obviate?In terms of data modeling Lance obviously adds a vector type, what are the features and constraints that engineers should be aware of when modeling their embeddings or arbitrary vectors?Are there any practical or hard limitations on vector dimensionality?When generating Lance files/datasets, what are some considerations to be aware of for balancing file/chunk sizes for I/O efficiency and random access in cloud storage?I noticed that the file specification has space for feature flags. How has that aided in enabling experimentation in new capabilities and optimizations?What are some of the engineering and design decisions that were most challenging and/or had the biggest impact on the performance and utility of Lance?The most obvious interface for reading and writing Lance files is through LanceDB. Can you describe the use cases that it focuses on and its notable features?What are the other main integrations for Lance?What are the opportunities or roadblocks in adding support for Lance and vector storage/indexes in e.g. Iceberg or Delta to enable its use in data lake environments?What are the most interesting, innovative, or unexpected ways that you have seen Lance used?What are the most interesting, unexpected, or challenging lessons that you have learned while working on the Lance format?When is Lance the wrong choice?What do you have planned for the future of Lance?Contact Info LinkedInGitHubParting Question From your perspective, what is the biggest gap in the tooling or technology for data management today?Links Lance FormatLanceDBSubstraitPyArrowFAISSPineconePodcast EpisodeParquetIcebergPodcast EpisodeDelta LakePodcast EpisodePyLanceHilbert CurvesSIFT VectorsS3 ExpressWekaDataFusionRay DataTorch Data LoaderHNSW == Hierarchical Navigable Small Worlds vector indexIVFPQ vector indexGeoJSONPolarsThe intro and outro music is from The Hug by The Freak Fandango Orchestra / CC BY-SA

Summary In this episode of the Data Engineering Podcast, Adrian Broderieux and Marcin Rudolph, co-founders of DLT Hub, delve into the principles guiding DLT's development, emphasizing its role as a library rather than a platform, and its integration with lakehouse architectures and AI application frameworks. The episode explores the impact of the Python ecosystem's growth on DLT, highlighting integrations with high-performance libraries and the benefits of Arrow and DuckDB. The episode concludes with a discussion on the future of DLT, including plans for a portable data lake and the importance of interoperability in data management tools. Announcements Hello and welcome to the Data Engineering Podcast, the show about modern data managementImagine catching data issues before they snowball into bigger problems. That’s what Datafold’s new Monitors do. With automatic monitoring for cross-database data diffs, schema changes, key metrics, and custom data tests, you can catch discrepancies and anomalies in real time, right at the source. Whether it’s maintaining data integrity or preventing costly mistakes, Datafold Monitors give you the visibility and control you need to keep your entire data stack running smoothly. Want to stop issues before they hit production? Learn more at dataengineeringpodcast.com/datafold today!Your host is Tobias Macey and today I'm interviewing Adrian Brudaru and Marcin Rudolf, cofounders at dltHub, about the growth of dlt and the numerous ways that you can use it to address the complexities of data integrationInterview IntroductionHow did you get involved in the area of data management?Can you describe what dlt is and how it has evolved since we last spoke (September 2023)?What are the core principles that guide your work on dlt and dlthub?You have taken a very opinionated stance against managed extract/load services. What are the shortcomings of those platforms, and when would you argue in their favor?The landscape of data movement has undergone some interesting changes over the past year. Most notably, the growth of PyAirbyte and the rapid shifts around the needs of generative AI stacks (vector stores, unstructured data processing, etc.). How has that informed your product development and positioning?The Python ecosystem, and in particular data-oriented Python, has also undergone substantial evolution. What are the developments in the libraries and frameworks that you have been able to benefit from?What are some of the notable investments that you have made in the developer experience for building dlt pipelines?How have the interfaces for source/destination development improved?You recently published a post about the idea of a portable data lake. What are the missing pieces that would make that possible, and what are the developments/technologies that put that idea within reach?What is your strategy for building a sustainable product on top of dlt?How does that strategy help to form a "virtuous cycle" of improving the open source foundation?What are the most interesting, innovative, or unexpected ways that you have seen dlt used?What are the most interesting, unexpected, or challenging lessons that you have learned while working on dlt?When is dlt the wrong choice?What do you have planned for the future of dlt/dlthub?Contact Info AdrianLinkedInMarcinLinkedInParting Question From your perspective, what is the biggest gap in the tooling or technology for data management today?Closing Announcements Thank you for listening! Don't forget to check out our other shows. Podcast.init covers the Python language, its community, and the innovative ways it is being used. The AI Engineering Podcast is your guide to the fast-moving world of building AI systems.Visit the site to subscribe to the show, sign up for the mailing list, and read the show notes.If you've learned something or tried out a project from the show then tell us about it! Email [email protected] with your story.Links dltPodcast EpisodePyArrowPolarsIbisDuckDBPodcast Episodedlt Data ContractsRAG == Retrieval Augmented GenerationAI Engineering Podcast EpisodePyAirbyteOpenAI o1 ModelLanceDBQDrant EmbeddedAirflowGitHub ActionsArrow DataFusionApache ArrowPyIcebergDelta-RSSCD2 == Slowly Changing DimensionsSQLAlchemySQLGlotFSSpecPydanticSpacyEntity RecognitionParquet File FormatPython DecoratorREST API ToolkitOpenAPI Connector GeneratorConnectorXPython no-GILDelta LakePodcast EpisodeSQLMeshPodcast EpisodeHamiltonTabularPostHogPodcast.init EpisodeAsyncIOCursor.AIData MeshPodcast EpisodeFastAPILangChainGraphRAGAI Engineering Podcast EpisodeProperty GraphPython uvThe intro and outro music is from The Hug by The Freak Fandango Orchestra / CC BY-SA

Summary In this episode of the Data Engineering Podcast Lukas Schulte, co-founder and CEO of SDF, explores the development and capabilities of this fast and expressive SQL transformation tool. From its origins as a solution for addressing data privacy, governance, and quality concerns in modern data management, to its unique features like static analysis and type correctness, Lucas dives into what sets SDF apart from other tools like DBT and SQL Mesh. Tune in for insights on building a business around a developer tool, the importance of community and user experience in the data engineering ecosystem, and plans for future development, including supporting Python models and enhancing execution capabilities. Announcements Hello and welcome to the Data Engineering Podcast, the show about modern data managementImagine catching data issues before they snowball into bigger problems. That’s what Datafold’s new Monitors do. With automatic monitoring for cross-database data diffs, schema changes, key metrics, and custom data tests, you can catch discrepancies and anomalies in real time, right at the source. Whether it’s maintaining data integrity or preventing costly mistakes, Datafold Monitors give you the visibility and control you need to keep your entire data stack running smoothly. Want to stop issues before they hit production? Learn more at dataengineeringpodcast.com/datafold today!Your host is Tobias Macey and today I'm interviewing Lukas Schulte about SDF, a fast and expressive SQL transformation tool that understands your schemaInterview IntroductionHow did you get involved in the area of data management?Can you describe what SDF is and the story behind it?What's the story behind the name?What problem are you solving with SDF?dbt has been the dominant player for SQL-based transformations for several years, with other notable competition in the form of SQLMesh. Can you give an overview of the venn diagram for features and functionality across SDF, dbt and SQLMesh?Can you describe the design and implementation of SDF?How have the scope and goals of the project changed since you first started working on it?What does the development experience look like for a team working with SDF?How does that differ between the open and paid versions of the product?What are the features and functionality that SDF offers to address intra- and inter-team collaboration?One of the challenges for any second-mover technology with an established competitor is the adoption/migration path for teams who have already invested in the incumbent (dbt in this case). How are you addressing that barrier for SDF?Beyond the core migration path of the direct functionality of the incumbent product is the amount of tooling and communal knowledge that grows up around that product. How are you thinking about that aspect of the current landscape?What is your governing principle for what capabilities are in the open core and which go in the paid product?What are the most interesting, innovative, or unexpected ways that you have seen SDF used?What are the most interesting, unexpected, or challenging lessons that you have learned while working on SDF?When is SDF the wrong choice?What do you have planned for the future of SDF?Contact Info LinkedInParting Question From your perspective, what is the biggest gap in the tooling or technology for data management today?Links SDFSemantic Data Warehouseasdf-vmdbtSoftware Linting)SQLMeshPodcast EpisodeCoalescePodcast EpisodeApache IcebergPodcast EpisodeDuckDB Podcast Episode SDF Classifiersdbt Semantic Layerdbt expectationsApache DatafusionIbisThe intro and outro music is from The Hug by The Freak Fandango Orchestra / CC BY-SA