If Data Vault is a new term for you, it's a data modeling design pattern. We're joined by Brandon Taylor, a senior data architect at Guild, and Michael Olschimke, who is the CEO of Scalefree—the consulting firm whose co-founder Dan Lindstedt is credited as the designer of the data vault architecture.  In this conversation with Tristan and Julia, Michael and Brandon explore the Data Vault approach among data warehouse design methodologies. They discuss Data Vault's adoption in Europe, its alignment with data mesh architecture, and the ongoing debate over Data Vault vs. Kimball methods.  For full show notes and to read 6+ years of back issues of the podcast's companion newsletter, head to https://roundup.getdbt.com. The Analytics Engineering Podcast is sponsored by dbt Labs.

The Guild team migrated to Snowflake and dbt for their data warehousing needs and immediately saw the benefits of standardizing model structure, DRYer logic, data lineage ,and automated testing on Pull Requests.

But leveraging dbt didn’t solve everything. Pain points around maintaining model logic, handling historical data, and integrating data from over 60 source systems meant that analysts still struggled to provide a unified view of the business. The team knew that they needed to level up their processes and modeling again, and chose to adopt Data Vault (DV).

Brandon and Rebecca take you behind the scenes of this decision to explain the benefits of Data Vault. They highlight DV’s ability to handle complex data integration requirements while remaining agile and demonstrate that it complements other modern data concepts like domain-driven design and data mesh.

Attendees learn what Data Vault is, when it can be a key component of a successful data strategy, and instances where it’s not the right fit. Walk away with practical tips to successfully transition based on a real-world implementation.

Guild transformed their data warehouse; you can too!

Speakers: Brandon Taylor, Senior Data Architect, Guild; Rebecca Di Bari Staff Data Engineer , Guild

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