Summary

Building a data platform is a substrantial engineering endeavor. Once it is running, the next challenge is figuring out how to address release management for all of the different component parts. The services and systems need to be kept up to date, but so does the code that controls their behavior. In this episode your host Tobias Macey reflects on his current challenges in this area and some of the factors that contribute to the complexity of the problem.

Announcements

Hello and welcome to the Data Engineering Podcast, the show about modern data management This episode is supported by Code Comments, an original podcast from Red Hat. As someone who listens to the Data Engineering Podcast, you know that the road from tool selection to production readiness is anything but smooth or straight. In Code Comments, host Jamie Parker, Red Hatter and experienced engineer, shares the journey of technologists from across the industry and their hard-won lessons in implementing new technologies. I listened to the recent episode "Transforming Your Database" and appreciated the valuable advice on how to approach the selection and integration of new databases in applications and the impact on team dynamics. There are 3 seasons of great episodes and new ones landing everywhere you listen to podcasts. Search for "Code Commentst" in your podcast player or go to dataengineeringpodcast.com/codecomments today to subscribe. My thanks to the team at Code Comments for their support. Data lakes are notoriously complex. For data engineers who battle to build and scale high quality data workflows on the data lake, Starburst is an end-to-end data lakehouse platform built on Trino, the query engine Apache Iceberg was designed for, with complete support for all table formats including Apache Iceberg, Hive, and Delta Lake. Trusted by teams of all sizes, including Comcast and Doordash. Want to see Starburst in action? Go to dataengineeringpodcast.com/starburst and get $500 in credits to try Starburst Galaxy today, the easiest and fastest way to get started using Trino. Your host is Tobias Macey and today I want to talk about my experiences managing the QA and release management process of my data platform

Interview

Introduction As a team, our overall goal is to ensure that the production environment for our data platform is highly stable and reliable. This is the foundational element of establishing and maintaining trust with the consumers of our data. In order to support this effort, we need to ensure that only changes that have been tested and verified are promoted to production. Our current challenge is one that plagues all data teams. We want to have an environment that mirrors our production environment that is available for testing, but it’s not feasible to maintain a complete duplicate of all of the production data. Compounding that challenge is the fact that each of the components of our data platform interact with data in slightly different ways and need different processes for ensuring that changes are being promoted safely.

Contact Info

LinkedIn Website

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 Machine Learning Podcast helps you go from idea to production with machine learning. 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

Data Platforms and Leaky Abstractions Episode Building A Data Platform From Scratch Airbyte

Podcast Episode

Trino dbt Starburst Galaxy Superset Dagster LakeFS

Podcast Episode

Nessie

Podcast Episode

Iceberg Snowflake LocalStack DSL == Domain Specific Language

The intro and outro music is from The Hug by The Freak Fandango Orchestra / CC BY-S

Barry McCardel is the co-founder and CEO of Hex. Hex is an analytics tool that's structured around a notebook experience, but as you'll hear in the episode, goes well beyond the traditional notebook. We're big fans of Hex at dbt Labs, and use it for a bunch of our internal data work. In this episode, Barry and Tristan discuss notebooks and data analysis, before zooming out to discuss the hype cycle of data science, how AI is different, the experience of building AI products, and how AI will impact data practitioners. 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.

Summary

Databases come in a variety of formats for different use cases. The default association with the term "database" is relational engines, but non-relational engines are also used quite widely. In this episode Oren Eini, CEO and creator of RavenDB, explores the nuances of relational vs. non-relational engines, and the strategies for designing a non-relational database.

Announcements

Hello and welcome to the Data Engineering Podcast, the show about modern data management This episode is brought to you by Datafold – a testing automation platform for data engineers that prevents data quality issues from entering every part of your data workflow, from migration to dbt deployment. Datafold has recently launched data replication testing, providing ongoing validation for source-to-target replication. Leverage Datafold's fast cross-database data diffing and Monitoring to test your replication pipelines automatically and continuously. Validate consistency between source and target at any scale, and receive alerts about any discrepancies. Learn more about Datafold by visiting dataengineeringpodcast.com/datafold. Dagster offers a new approach to building and running data platforms and data pipelines. It is an open-source, cloud-native orchestrator for the whole development lifecycle, with integrated lineage and observability, a declarative programming model, and best-in-class testability. Your team can get up and running in minutes thanks to Dagster Cloud, an enterprise-class hosted solution that offers serverless and hybrid deployments, enhanced security, and on-demand ephemeral test deployments. Go to dataengineeringpodcast.com/dagster today to get started. Your first 30 days are free! Data lakes are notoriously complex. For data engineers who battle to build and scale high quality data workflows on the data lake, Starburst powers petabyte-scale SQL analytics fast, at a fraction of the cost of traditional methods, so that you can meet all your data needs ranging from AI to data applications to complete analytics. Trusted by teams of all sizes, including Comcast and Doordash, Starburst is a data lake analytics platform that delivers the adaptability and flexibility a lakehouse ecosystem promises. And Starburst does all of this on an open architecture with first-class support for Apache Iceberg, Delta Lake and Hudi, so you always maintain ownership of your data. Want to see Starburst in action? Go to dataengineeringpodcast.com/starburst and get $500 in credits to try Starburst Galaxy today, the easiest and fastest way to get started using Trino. Your host is Tobias Macey and today I'm interviewing Oren Eini about the work of designing and building a NoSQL database engine

Interview

Introduction How did you get involved in the area of data management? Can you describe what constitutes a NoSQL database?

How have the requirements and applications of NoSQL engines changed since they first became popular ~15 years ago?

What are the factors that convince teams to use a NoSQL vs. SQL database?

NoSQL is a generalized term that encompasses a number of different data models. How does the underlying representation (e.g. document, K/V, graph) change that calculus?

How have the evolution in data formats (e.g. N-dimensional vectors, point clouds, etc.) changed the landscape for NoSQL engines? When designing and building a database, what are the initial set of questions that need to be answered?

How many "core capabilities" can you reasonably design around before they conflict with each other?

How have you approached the evolution of RavenDB as you add new capabilities and mature the project?

What are some of the early decisions that had to be unwound to enable new capabilities?

If you were to start from scratch today, what database would you build? What are the most interesting, innovative, or unexpected ways that you have seen RavenDB/NoSQL databases used? What are the most interesting, unexpected, or challenging lessons t

Governance is difficult for an organization of any size, and many struggle to execute on data management in an efficient manner. At Assurance, the team has utilized Starburst Galaxy to embed ownership within the data mesh framework, completely transforming the way organizations handle data. By granting data owners complete control and visibility over their data, Assurance enables a more nuanced and effective approach to data management. This approach not only fosters a sense of responsibility but also ensures that data is relevant, up-to-date, and aligned with the evolving needs of the organization. In this presentation, Shen Weng and Mitchell Polsons will discuss the strategic implementation of compute ownership in Starburst Galaxy, showing how it empowers teams to identify and resolve issues quickly, significantly improving the uptime of key computing operations. This approach is vital for achieving operational excellence, characterized by enhanced efficiency, reliability, and quality. Additionally, the new data setup has enabled the Assurance team to simplify data transformation processes using dbt and to improve data quality monitoring with Monte Carlo, further streamlining and strengthening our data management practices.

Have you ever wondered how a data company does data? In this session, Isaac Obezo, Staff Data Engineer at Starburst, will take you for a peek behind the curtain into Starburst’s own data architecture built to support batch processing of telemetry data within Galaxy data pipelines. Isaac will walk you through our architecture utilizing tools like git, dbt, and Starburst Galaxy to create a CI/CD process allowing our data engineering team to iterate quickly to deploy new models, develop and land data, and create and improve existing models in the data lake. Isaac will also discuss Starburst’s mentality toward data quality, the use of data products, and the process toward delivering quality analytics.

Join the team from Moody's Analytics as they take you on a personal journey of optimizing their data pipelines for data quality and governance. Like many data practitioners, Ryan understands the frustration and anxiety that comes with accidentally introducing bad code into production pipelines—he's spent countless hours putting out fires caused by these unexpected changes. In this session, Ryan will recount his experiences with a previous data stack that lacked standardized testing methods and visibility into the impact of code changes on production data. He'll also share how their new data stack is safeguarded by Datafold's data diffing and continuous integration (CI) capabilities, which enables his team to work with greater confidence, peace of mind, and speed.

Summary

Maintaining a single source of truth for your data is the biggest challenge in data engineering. Different roles and tasks in the business need their own ways to access and analyze the data in the organization. In order to enable this use case, while maintaining a single point of access, the semantic layer has evolved as a technological solution to the problem. In this episode Artyom Keydunov, creator of Cube, discusses the evolution and applications of the semantic layer as a component of your data platform, and how Cube provides speed and cost optimization for your data consumers.

Announcements

Hello and welcome to the Data Engineering Podcast, the show about modern data management This episode is brought to you by Datafold – a testing automation platform for data engineers that prevents data quality issues from entering every part of your data workflow, from migration to dbt deployment. Datafold has recently launched data replication testing, providing ongoing validation for source-to-target replication. Leverage Datafold's fast cross-database data diffing and Monitoring to test your replication pipelines automatically and continuously. Validate consistency between source and target at any scale, and receive alerts about any discrepancies. Learn more about Datafold by visiting dataengineeringpodcast.com/datafold. Dagster offers a new approach to building and running data platforms and data pipelines. It is an open-source, cloud-native orchestrator for the whole development lifecycle, with integrated lineage and observability, a declarative programming model, and best-in-class testability. Your team can get up and running in minutes thanks to Dagster Cloud, an enterprise-class hosted solution that offers serverless and hybrid deployments, enhanced security, and on-demand ephemeral test deployments. Go to dataengineeringpodcast.com/dagster today to get started. Your first 30 days are free! Data lakes are notoriously complex. For data engineers who battle to build and scale high quality data workflows on the data lake, Starburst powers petabyte-scale SQL analytics fast, at a fraction of the cost of traditional methods, so that you can meet all your data needs ranging from AI to data applications to complete analytics. Trusted by teams of all sizes, including Comcast and Doordash, Starburst is a data lake analytics platform that delivers the adaptability and flexibility a lakehouse ecosystem promises. And Starburst does all of this on an open architecture with first-class support for Apache Iceberg, Delta Lake and Hudi, so you always maintain ownership of your data. Want to see Starburst in action? Go to dataengineeringpodcast.com/starburst and get $500 in credits to try Starburst Galaxy today, the easiest and fastest way to get started using Trino. Your host is Tobias Macey and today I'm interviewing Artyom Keydunov about the role of the semantic layer in your data platform

Interview

Introduction How did you get involved in the area of data management? Can you start by outlining the technical elements of what it means to have a "semantic layer"? In the past couple of years there was a rapid hype cycle around the "metrics layer" and "headless BI", which has largely faded. Can you give your assessment of the current state of the industry around the adoption/implementation of these concepts? What are the benefits of having a discrete service that offers the business metrics/semantic mappings as opposed to implementing those concepts as part of a more general system? (e.g. dbt, BI, warehouse marts, etc.)

At what point does it become necessary/beneficial for a team to adopt such a service? What are the challenges involved in retrofitting a semantic layer into a production data system?

evolution of requirements/usage patterns technical complexities/performance and cost optimization What are the most interesting, innovative, or unexpected ways that you have seen Cube used? What are the most interesting, unexpec

Matt Turck has been publishing his ecosystem map since 2012. It was first called the Big Data Landscape. Now it's the Machine Learning, AI & Data (MAD) Landscape.  The 2024 MAD Landscape includes 2,011(!) logos, which Matt attributes first a data infrastructure cycle and now an ML/AI cycle. As Matt writes, "Those two waves are intimately related. A core idea of the MAD Landscape every year has been to show the symbiotic relationship between data infrastructure, analytics/BI,  ML/AI, and applications." Matt and Tristan discuss themes in Matt's post: generative AI's impact on data analytics, the modern AI stack compared to the modern data stack, and Databricks vs. Snowflake (plus Microsoft Fabric). For full show notes and to read 7+ 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.

Summary

Working with data is a complicated process, with numerous chances for something to go wrong. Identifying and accounting for those errors is a critical piece of building trust in the organization that your data is accurate and up to date. While there are numerous products available to provide that visibility, they all have different technologies and workflows that they focus on. To bring observability to dbt projects the team at Elementary embedded themselves into the workflow. In this episode Maayan Salom explores the approach that she has taken to bring observability, enhanced testing capabilities, and anomaly detection into every step of the dbt developer experience.

Announcements

Hello and welcome to the Data Engineering Podcast, the show about modern data management Data lakes are notoriously complex. For data engineers who battle to build and scale high quality data workflows on the data lake, Starburst powers petabyte-scale SQL analytics fast, at a fraction of the cost of traditional methods, so that you can meet all your data needs ranging from AI to data applications to complete analytics. Trusted by teams of all sizes, including Comcast and Doordash, Starburst is a data lake analytics platform that delivers the adaptability and flexibility a lakehouse ecosystem promises. And Starburst does all of this on an open architecture with first-class support for Apache Iceberg, Delta Lake and Hudi, so you always maintain ownership of your data. Want to see Starburst in action? Go to dataengineeringpodcast.com/starburst and get $500 in credits to try Starburst Galaxy today, the easiest and fastest way to get started using Trino. Dagster offers a new approach to building and running data platforms and data pipelines. It is an open-source, cloud-native orchestrator for the whole development lifecycle, with integrated lineage and observability, a declarative programming model, and best-in-class testability. Your team can get up and running in minutes thanks to Dagster Cloud, an enterprise-class hosted solution that offers serverless and hybrid deployments, enhanced security, and on-demand ephemeral test deployments. Go to dataengineeringpodcast.com/dagster today to get started. Your first 30 days are free! This episode is brought to you by Datafold – a testing automation platform for data engineers that prevents data quality issues from entering every part of your data workflow, from migration to dbt deployment. Datafold has recently launched data replication testing, providing ongoing validation for source-to-target replication. Leverage Datafold's fast cross-database data diffing and Monitoring to test your replication pipelines automatically and continuously. Validate consistency between source and target at any scale, and receive alerts about any discrepancies. Learn more about Datafold by visiting dataengineeringpodcast.com/datafold. Your host is Tobias Macey and today I'm interviewing Maayan Salom about how to incorporate observability into a dbt-oriented workflow and how Elementary can help

Interview

Introduction How did you get involved in the area of data management? Can you start by outlining what elements of observability are most relevant for dbt projects? What are some of the common ad-hoc/DIY methods that teams develop to acquire those insights?

What are the challenges/shortcomings associated with those approaches?

Over the past ~3 years there were numerous data observability systems/products created. What are some of the ways that the specifics of dbt workflows are not covered by those generalized tools?

What are the insights that can be more easily generated by embedding into the dbt toolchain and development cycle?

Can you describe what Elementary is and how it is designed to enhance the development and maintenance work in dbt projects? How is Elementary designed/implemented?

How have the scope and goals of the project changed since you started working on it? What are the engineering ch

Master the art and science of analytics engineering with 'Fundamentals of Analytics Engineering.' This book takes you on a comprehensive journey from understanding foundational concepts to implementing end-to-end analytics solutions. You'll gain not just theoretical knowledge but practical expertise in building scalable, robust data platforms to meet organizational needs. What this Book will help me do Design and implement effective data pipelines leveraging modern tools like Airbyte, BigQuery, and dbt. Adopt best practices for data modeling and schema design to enhance system performance and develop clearer data structures. Learn advanced techniques for ensuring data quality, governance, and observability in your data solutions. Master collaborative coding practices, including version control with Git and strategies for maintaining well-documented codebases. Automate and manage data workflows efficiently using CI/CD pipelines and workflow orchestrators. Author(s) Dumky De Wilde, alongside six co-authors-experienced professionals from various facets of the analytics field-delivers a cohesive exploration of analytics engineering. The authors blend their expertise in software development, data analysis, and engineering to offer actionable advice and insights. Their approachable ethos makes complex concepts understandable, promoting educational learning. Who is it for? This book is a perfect fit for data analysts and engineers curious about transitioning into analytics engineering. Aspiring professionals as well as seasoned analytics engineers looking to deepen their understanding of modern practices will find guidance. It's tailored for individuals aiming to boost their career trajectory in data engineering roles, addressing fundamental to advanced topics.

Send us a text Welcome to the cozy corner of the tech world where ones and zeros mingle with casual chit-chat. Datatopics Unplugged is your go-to spot for relaxed discussions around tech, news, data, and society. Dive into conversations that should flow as smoothly as your morning coffee (but don't), where industry insights meet laid-back banter. Whether you're a data aficionado or just someone curious about the digital age, pull up a chair, relax, and let's get into the heart of data, unplugged style! In this episode #42, titled "Unraveling the Fabric of Data: Microsoft's Ecosystem and Beyond," we're joined once again by the tech maestro and newly minted Microsoft MVP, Sam Debruyn. Sam brings to the table a bevy of updates from his recent accolades to the intricacies of Microsoft's data platforms and the world of SQL.

Biz Buzz: From Reddit's IPO to the performance versus utility debate in database selection, we dissect the big moves shaking up the business side of tech. Read about Reddit's IPO.Microsoft's Fabric Unraveled: Get the lowdown on Microsoft's Fabric, the one-stop AI platform, as Sam Debruyn gives us a deep dive into its capabilities and integration with Azure Databricks and Power BI. Discover more about Fabric and dive into Sam's blog.dbt Developments: Sam talks dbt and the exciting new SQL tool for data pipeline building with upcoming unit testing capabilities.Polaris Project: Delving into Microsoft's internal storage projects, including insights on Polaris and its integration with Synapse SQL. Read the paper here.AI Advances: From the release of Grok-1 and Apple's MM1 AI model to GPT-4's trillion parameters, we discuss the leaps in artificial intelligence.Stability in Motion: After OpenAI's Sora, we look at Stability AI's new venture into motion with Stable Video. Check out Stable Video.Benchmarking Debate: A critical look at performance benchmarks in database selection and the ongoing search for the 'best' database. Contemplate benchmarking perspectives.Versioning Philosophy: Hot takes on semantic versioning and what stability really means in software development. Dive into Semantic Versioning.

Matthew Lynley is a bit of a hybrid. He's been a long-time journalist covering enterprise tech, currently in his fantastic AI and data newsletter Supervised, and he's also been a hands-on data practitioner.  Matthew has covered the analytics tech stack, but this time Tristan turns the tables to get Matthew's perspective on the rise of Gen AI as a topic in the popular press, what's going on in the space today, and where AI is headed. 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.

Juan Sequeda is a principal data scientist and head of the AI Lab at data.world, and is also the co-host of the fantastic data podcast Catalog and Cocktails.  This episode tackles semantics, semantic web, Juan's research in how raw text-to-SQL performs versus text-to-semantic layer,  and where we both believe AI will make an impact in the world of structured data analytics. 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.

Benn Stancil, cofounder and CTO at Mode, returns to The Analytics Engineering Podcast to discuss the evolution of the term "modern data stack" and its value today. Tristan wrote on this idea for The Analytics Engineering Roundup in Is the Modern Data Stack Still a Useful Idea? 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.

In this episode, I’m chatting with former Gartner analyst Sanjeev Mohan who is the Co-Author of Data Products for Dummies. Throughout our conversation, Sanjeev shares his expertise on the evolution of data products, and what he’s seen as a result of implementing practices that prioritize solving for use cases and business value. Sanjeev also shares a new approach of structuring organizations to best implement ownership and accountability of data product outcomes. Sanjeev and I also explore the common challenges of product adoption and who is responsible for user experience. I purposefully had Sanjeev on the show because I think we have pretty different perspectives from which we see the data product space.

Highlights/ Skip to:

I introduce Sanjeev Mohan, co-author of Data Products for Dummies (00:39) Sanjeev expands more on the concept of writing a “for Dummies” book   (00:53) Sanjeev shares his definition of a data product, including both a technical and a business definition (01:59) Why Sanjeev believes organizational changes and accountability are the keys to preventing the acceleration of shipping data products with little to no tangible value (05:45) How Sanjeev recommends getting buy-in for data product ownership from other departments in an organization (11:05) Sanjeev and I explore adoption challenges and the topic of user experience (13:23) Sanjeev explains what role is responsible for user experience and design (19:03) Who should be responsible for defining the metrics that determine business value (28:58) Sanjeev shares some case studies of companies who have adopted this approach to data products and their outcomes (30:29) Where companies are finding data product managers currently (34:19) Sanjeev expands on his perspective regarding the importance of prioritizing business value and use cases (40:52) Where listeners can get Data Products for Dummies, and learn more about Sanjeev’s work (44:33)

Quotes from Today’s Episode “You may slap a label of data product on existing artifact; it does not make it a data product because there’s no sense of accountability. In a data product, because they are following product management best practices, there must be a data product owner or a data product manager. There’s a single person [responsible for the result]. — Sanjeev Mohan (09:31)

“I haven’t even mentioned the word data mesh because data mesh and data products, they don’t always have to go hand-in-hand. I can build data products, but I don’t need to go into the—do all of data mesh principles.” – Sanjeev Mohan (26:45)

“We need to have the right organization, we need to have a set of processes, and then we need a simplified technology which is standardized across different teams. So, this way, we have the benefit of reusing the same technology. Maybe it is Snowflake for storage, DBT for modeling, and so on. And the idea is that different teams should have the ability to bring their own analytical engine.” – Sanjeev Mohan (27:58)

“Generative AI, right now as we are recording, is still in a prototyping phase. Maybe in 2024, it’ll go heavy-duty production. We are not in prototyping phase for data products for a lot of companies. They’ve already been experimenting for a year or two, and now they’re actually using them in production. So, we’ve crossed that tipping point for data products.” – Sanjeev Mohan (33:15)

“Low adoption is a problem that’s not just limited to data products. How long have we had data catalogs, but they have low adoption. So, it’s a common problem.” – Sanjeev Mohan (39:10)

“That emphasis on technology first is a wrong approach. I tell people that I’m sorry to burst your bubble, but there are no technology projects, there are only business projects. Technology is an enabler. You don’t do technology for the sake of technology; you have to serve a business cause, so let’s start with that and keep that front and center.” – Sanjeev Mohan (43:03)

Links Data Products for Dummies: https://www.dataops.live/dataproductsfordummies “What Exactly is A Data Product” article: https://medium.com/data-mesh-learning/what-exactly-is-a-data-product-7f6935a17912 It Depends: https://www.youtube.com/@SanjeevMohan Chief Data Analytics and Product Officer of Equifax: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kFY7WGc-jFM SanjMo Consulting: https://www.sanjmo.com/ dataops.live: https://dataops.live dataops.live/dataproductsfordummies: https://dataops.live/dataproductsfordummies LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sanjmo/ Medium articles: https://sanjmo.medium.com

Moritz Heimpel from Siemens and Ben Flusberg from Cox Automotive have very similar jobs. They both act as stewards of the data strategies at large, complex companies. In this episode, we get into what it's like to collaborate with data at scale. Ben and Mortitz share their experiences adopting a data mesh architecture and what that looks like at their organizations. 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.

With the shift from data warehouses to data lakes, data now lands in repositories before it's been transformed, enabling engineers to model raw data into clean, well-defined datasets. dbt (data build tool) helps you take data further. This practical book shows data analysts, data engineers, BI developers, and data scientists how to create a true self-service transformation platform through the use of dynamic SQL. Authors Rui Machado from Monstarlab and Hélder Russa from Jumia show you how to quickly deliver new data products by focusing more on value delivery and less on architectural and engineering aspects. If you know your business well and have the technical skills to model raw data into clean, well-defined datasets, you'll learn how to design and deliver data models without any technical influence. With this book, you'll learn: What dbt is and how a dbt project is structured How dbt fits into the data engineering and analytics worlds How to collaborate on building data models The main tools and architectures for building useful, functional data models How to fit dbt into data warehousing and laking architecture How to build tests for data transformations

Summary

Building a data platform that is enjoyable and accessible for all of its end users is a substantial challenge. One of the core complexities that needs to be addressed is the fractal set of integrations that need to be managed across the individual components. In this episode Tobias Macey shares his thoughts on the challenges that he is facing as he prepares to build the next set of architectural layers for his data platform to enable a larger audience to start accessing the data being managed by his team.

Announcements

Hello and welcome to the Data Engineering Podcast, the show about modern data management Introducing RudderStack Profiles. RudderStack Profiles takes the SaaS guesswork and SQL grunt work out of building complete customer profiles so you can quickly ship actionable, enriched data to every downstream team. You specify the customer traits, then Profiles runs the joins and computations for you to create complete customer profiles. Get all of the details and try the new product today at dataengineeringpodcast.com/rudderstack You shouldn't have to throw away the database to build with fast-changing data. You should be able to keep the familiarity of SQL and the proven architecture of cloud warehouses, but swap the decades-old batch computation model for an efficient incremental engine to get complex queries that are always up-to-date. With Materialize, you can! It’s the only true SQL streaming database built from the ground up to meet the needs of modern data products. Whether it’s real-time dashboarding and analytics, personalization and segmentation or automation and alerting, Materialize gives you the ability to work with fresh, correct, and scalable results — all in a familiar SQL interface. Go to dataengineeringpodcast.com/materialize today to get 2 weeks free! Developing event-driven pipelines is going to be a lot easier - Meet Functions! Memphis functions enable developers and data engineers to build an organizational toolbox of functions to process, transform, and enrich ingested events “on the fly” in a serverless manner using AWS Lambda syntax, without boilerplate, orchestration, error handling, and infrastructure in almost any language, including Go, Python, JS, .NET, Java, SQL, and more. Go to dataengineeringpodcast.com/memphis today to get started! Data lakes are notoriously complex. For data engineers who battle to build and scale high quality data workflows on the data lake, Starburst powers petabyte-scale SQL analytics fast, at a fraction of the cost of traditional methods, so that you can meet all your data needs ranging from AI to data applications to complete analytics. Trusted by teams of all sizes, including Comcast and Doordash, Starburst is a data lake analytics platform that delivers the adaptability and flexibility a lakehouse ecosystem promises. And Starburst does all of this on an open architecture with first-class support for Apache Iceberg, Delta Lake and Hudi, so you always maintain ownership of your data. Want to see Starburst in action? Go to dataengineeringpodcast.com/starburst and get $500 in credits to try Starburst Galaxy today, the easiest and fastest way to get started using Trino. Your host is Tobias Macey and today I'll be sharing an update on my own journey of building a data platform, with a particular focus on the challenges of tool integration and maintaining a single source of truth

Interview

Introduction How did you get involved in the area of data management? data sharing weight of history

existing integrations with dbt switching cost for e.g. SQLMesh de facto standard of Airflow

Single source of truth

permissions management across application layers Database engine Storage layer in a lakehouse Presentation/access layer (BI) Data flows dbt -> table level lineage orchestration engine -> pipeline flows

task based vs. asset based

Metadata platform as the logical place for horizontal view

Contact Info

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Parting Questio

Send us a text Welcome to another engaging episode of Datatopics Unplugged, the podcast where tech and relaxation intersect. Today, we're excited to host two special guests, Paolo and Tim, who bring their unique perspectives to our cozy corner. Guests of Today Paolo: An enthusiast of fantasy and sci-fi reading, Paolo is on a personal mission to reduce his coffee consumption. He has a unique way of measuring his height, at 0.89 Sams tall. With over two and a half years of experience as a data engineer at dataroots, Paolo contributes a rich professional perspective. His hobbies extend to playing field hockey and a preference for the warmer summer season.Tim: Occasionally known as Dr. Dunkenstein, Tim brings a mix of humor and insight. He measures his height at 0.87 Sams tall. As the Head of Bizdev, he prefers to steer clear of grand titles, revealing his views on hierarchical structures and monarchies.Topics Biz Corner: Kyutai: We delve into France's answer to OpenAI with Paolo Leonard, exploring the implications and future of Kyutai: https://techcrunch.com/2023/11/17/kyutai-is-an-french-ai-research-lab-with-a-330-million-budget-that-will-make-everything-open-source/GPT-NL: A discussion led by Bart Smeets on the Netherlands' own open language model and its potential impact: https://www.computerweekly.com/news/366558412/Netherlands-starts-building-its-own-AI-language-modelTech Corner: Data Quality Insights: A blog post by Paolo on data quality vs. data validation. We'll explore when and why data quality is essential, and evaluate tools like dbt, soda, deequ, and great_expectations: https://dataroots.io/blog/state-of-data-quality-october-2023Soda Data Contracts: An overview of the newly released OSS Data Contract Engine by Soda. https://docs.soda.io/soda/data-contracts.htmlFood for Thought Corner: Hare - A 100-Year Programming Language: Bart starts a discussion on the ambition of Hare to remain relevant for a century: https://harelang.org/blog/2023-11-08-100-year-language/.Join us for this mix of expert insights and light-hearted moments. Whether you're deeply embedded in the tech world or just dipping your toes in, this episode promises to be both informative and entertaining!

And, yes. There is a voucher, go to dataroots.io and navigate to the shop (top right) and use voucher code murilos_bargain_blast for a 25EUR discount!

Summary

The dbt project has become overwhelmingly popular across analytics and data engineering teams. While it is easy to adopt, there are many potential pitfalls. Dustin Dorsey and Cameron Cyr co-authored a practical guide to building your dbt project. In this episode they share their hard-won wisdom about how to build and scale your dbt projects.

Announcements

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Interview

Introduction How did you get involved in the area of data management? What was your path to adoption of dbt?

What did you use prior to its existence? When/why/how did you start using it?

What are some of the common challenges that teams experience when getting started with dbt?

How does prior experience in analytics and/or software engineering impact those outcomes?

You recently wrote a book to give a crash course in best practices for dbt. What motivated you to invest that time and effort?

What new lessons did you learn about dbt in the process of writing the book?

The introduction of dbt is largely res