Data Engineering Podcast Tobias Macey

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


LinkedIn
Website


Parting Ques

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


Hello and welcome to the Data Engineering Podcast, the show about modern data management
Data projects are notoriously complex. With multiple stakeholders to manage across varying backgrounds and toolchains even simple reports can become unwieldy to maintain. Miro is your single pane of glass where everyone can discover, track, and collaborate on your organization's data. I especially like the ability to combine your technical diagrams with data documentation and dependency mapping, allowing your data engineers and data consumers to communicate seamlessly about your projects. Find simplicity in your most complex projects with Miro. Your first three Miro boards are free when you sign up today at dataengineeringpodcast.com/miro. That’s three free boards at dataengineeringpodcast.com/miro.
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!
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 Dustin Dorsey and Cameron Cyr about how to design your dbt projects


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

Summary

Software development involves an interesting balance of creativity and repetition of patterns. Generative AI has accelerated the ability of developer tools to provide useful suggestions that speed up the work of engineers. Tabnine is one of the main platforms offering an AI powered assistant for software engineers. In this episode Eran Yahav shares the journey that he has taken in building this product and the ways that it enhances the ability of humans to get their work done, and when the humans have to adapt to the tool.


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
This episode is brought to you by Datafold – a testing automation platform for data engineers that finds data quality issues before the code and data are deployed to production. Datafold leverages data-diffing to compare production and development environments and column-level lineage to show you the exact impact of every code change on data, metrics, and BI tools, keeping your team productive and stakeholders happy. Datafold integrates with dbt, the modern data stack, and seamlessly plugs in your data CI for team-wide and automated testing. If you are migrating to a modern data stack, Datafold can also help you automate data and code validation to speed up the migration. Learn more about Datafold by visiting dataengineeringpodcast.com/datafold
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.
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!
Your host is Tobias Macey and today I'm interviewing Eran Yahav about building an AI powered developer assistant at Tabnine


Interview


Introduction
How did you get involved in machine learning?
Can you describe what Tabnine is and the story behind it?
What are the individual and organizational motivations for using AI to generate code?


What are the real-world limitations of generative AI for creating software? (e.g. size/complexity of the outputs, naming conventions, etc.)
What are the elements of skepticism/ov

Summary

Databases are the core of most applications, but they are often treated as inscrutable black boxes. When an application is slow, there is a good probability that the database needs some attention. In this episode Lukas Fittl shares some hard-won wisdom about the causes and solution of many performance bottlenecks and the work that he is doing to shine some light on PostgreSQL to make it easier to understand how to keep it running smoothly.


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!
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.
This episode is brought to you by Datafold – a testing automation platform for data engineers that finds data quality issues before the code and data are deployed to production. Datafold leverages data-diffing to compare production and development environments and column-level lineage to show you the exact impact of every code change on data, metrics, and BI tools, keeping your team productive and stakeholders happy. Datafold integrates with dbt, the modern data stack, and seamlessly plugs in your data CI for team-wide and automated testing. If you are migrating to a modern data stack, Datafold can also help you automate data and code validation to speed up the migration. Learn more about Datafold by visiting dataengineeringpodcast.com/datafold
Your host is Tobias Macey and today I'm interviewing Lukas Fittl about optimizing your database performance and tips for tuning Postgres


Interview


Introduction
How did you get involved in the area of data management?
What are the different ways that database performance problems impact the business?
What are the most common contributors to performance issues?
What are the useful signals that indicate performance challenges in the database?


For a given symptom, what are the steps that you recommend for determining the proximate cause?

What are the potential negative impacts to be aware of when

Summary

Databases are the core of most applications, whether transactional or analytical. In recent years the selection of database products has exploded, making the critical decision of which engine(s) to use even more difficult. In this episode Tanya Bragin shares her experiences as a product manager for two major vendors and the lessons that she has learned about how teams should approach the process of tool selection.


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!
This episode is brought to you by Datafold – a testing automation platform for data engineers that finds data quality issues before the code and data are deployed to production. Datafold leverages data-diffing to compare production and development environments and column-level lineage to show you the exact impact of every code change on data, metrics, and BI tools, keeping your team productive and stakeholders happy. Datafold integrates with dbt, the modern data stack, and seamlessly plugs in your data CI for team-wide and automated testing. If you are migrating to a modern data stack, Datafold can also help you automate data and code validation to speed up the migration. Learn more about Datafold by visiting dataengineeringpodcast.com/datafold
Data projects are notoriously complex. With multiple stakeholders to manage across varying backgrounds and toolchains even simple reports can become unwieldy to maintain. Miro is your single pane of glass where everyone can discover, track, and collaborate on your organization's data. I especially like the ability to combine your technical diagrams with data documentation and dependency mapping, allowing your data engineers and data consumers to communicate seamlessly about your projects. Find simplicity in your most complex projects with Miro. Your first three Miro boards are free when you sign up today at dataengineeringpodcast.com/miro. That’s three free boards at dataengineeringpodcast.com/miro.
Your host is Tobias Macey and today I'm interviewing Tanya Bragin about her views on the database products market


Interview


Introduction
How did you get involved in the area of data management?
What are the aspects of the database market that keep you interested as a VP of product?


How have your experiences at Elastic informed your current work at Clickhouse?

What are the main product categories for databases today?


What are the industry trends that have the most impact on the development and growth of different product categories?
Which categories do you see growing the fastest?

When a team is selecting a database technology for a given task, what are the types of questions that they should be asking?
Transactional engines like Postgres, SQL Server, Oracle, etc. were long us

Summary

The primary application of data has moved beyond analytics. With the broader audience comes the need to present data in a more approachable format. This has led to the broad adoption of data products being the delivery mechanism for information. In this episode Ranjith Raghunath shares his thoughts on how to build a strategy for the development, delivery, and evolution of data products.


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!
As more people start using AI for projects, two things are clear: It’s a rapidly advancing field, but it’s tough to navigate. How can you get the best results for your use case? Instead of being subjected to a bunch of buzzword bingo, hear directly from pioneers in the developer and data science space on how they use graph tech to build AI-powered apps. . Attend the dev and ML talks at NODES 2023, a free online conference on October 26 featuring some of the brightest minds in tech. Check out the agenda and register today at Neo4j.com/NODES.
This episode is brought to you by Datafold – a testing automation platform for data engineers that finds data quality issues before the code and data are deployed to production. Datafold leverages data-diffing to compare production and development environments and column-level lineage to show you the exact impact of every code change on data, metrics, and BI tools, keeping your team productive and stakeholders happy. Datafold integrates with dbt, the modern data stack, and seamlessly plugs in your data CI for team-wide and automated testing. If you are migrating to a modern data stack, Datafold can also help you automate data and code validation to speed up the migration. Learn more about Datafold by visiting dataengineeringpodcast.com/datafold
Your host is Tobias Macey and today I'm interviewing Ranjith Raghunath about tactical elements of a data product strategy


Interview


Introduction
How did you get involved in the area of data management?
Can you describe what is encompassed by the idea of a data product strategy?


Which roles in an organization need to be involved in the planning and implementation of that strategy?

order of operations:


strategy -> platform design -> implementation/adoption
platform implementation -> product strategy -> interface development

managing grain of data in products
team organization to support product development/deployment
customer communications - what questions to ask? requirements gathering, helping to understand "the art of the possible"
What are the most interesting, innovative, or unexpected ways that you have seen organizations approach data product strategies?
What are the most interesting, unexpected, or challenging lessons that you have learned while working