dbt-core VS lightdash

dbt integration was one of our major goals early on but we found that the interaction wasn't as straightforward as had hoped.

There is an open PR in the dbt repo: https://github.com/dbt-labs/dbt-core/pull/5982#issuecomment-...

I have some ideas about future directions in this space where I believe PRQL could really shine. I will only be able to write those down in a couple of hours. I think this could be a really exciting direction for the project to grow into if anyone would like to collaborate and contribute!

> Could you share more specific details? Happy to look over / revise where needed.

Sure thing! I'd say first off, the solutions may look different for a small company/startup vs. a large enterprise. It can help if you explain the scale at which you are solving for.

On the enterprise side of things, they tend to buy solutions rather than build them in-house. Things like Informatica, Talend, etc. are common for large enterprises whose primary products are not data or software related. They just don't have the will, expertise, or the capital to invest in building and maintaining these solutions in-house so they just buy them off the shelf. On the surface, these are very expensive products, but even in the face of that it can still make sense for large enterprises in terms of the bottom line to buy rather than build.

For startups and smaller companies, have you looked at something like `dbt` (https://github.com/dbt-labs/dbt-core) ? I understand the desire to write some code, but often times there are already existing solutions for the problems you might be encountering.

ORM's should typically only exist on the consumer-side of the equation, if at all. A lot of business intelligence / business analysts are just going to use tools like Tableau and hook up to the data warehouse via a connector to visualize their data. You might have some consumers that are more sophisticated and may want to write some custom post-processing or aggregation code, and they could certainly use ORM's if they choose, but it isn't something you should enforce on them because it's a poor place to validate data since as mentioned there are different ways/tools to access the data and not all of them are going to go through your python SDK.

Indeed in a large enough company, you are going to have producers and consumers that are going to use different tools and programming languages, so it's a little bit presumptuous to write an SDK in python there.

Another thing to talk about, and this probably mostly applies to larger companies - have you looked at an architecture like a distributed data mesh (https://martinfowler.com/articles/data-mesh-principles.html)? This might be something to bring to the CTO more than try to push for yourself, but it can completely change the landscape of what you are doing.

> More broadly is the issue of the gap of what you think the role is, and what the role actually is when you join. There are definitely cases where this is accidental. The best way I can think of to close the gap is to maybe do a short-term contract, but may be challenging to do under time constraints etc.

Yeah this definitely sucks and it's not an enviable position to be in. I guess you have a choice to look for another job or try to stick it out with the company that did this to you. It's possible there is a geniune existential crisis for the company and a good reason why they did the bait-and-switch. Maybe it pays to stay, especially if you have equity in the company. On the other hand, it could also be the case that it is the result of questionable practices at the company. It's hard to make that call.

I really dislike SQL, but recognize its importance for many organizations. I also understand that SQL is definitely testable, particularly if managed by environments such as DBT (https://github.com/dbt-labs/dbt-core). Those who arrived here with preference to python will note that dbt is largely implemented in python, adds Jinja macros and iterative forms to SQL, and adds code testing capabilities.

3). Data Build Tool Repository.

dbt Cloud rightfully gets a lot of credit for creating dbt Core and for being the first managed dbt Core platform, but there are several entrants in the market; from those who just run dbt jobs like Fivetran to platforms that offer more like EL + T like Mozart Data and Datacoves which also has hosted VS Code editor for dbt development and Airflow.

Ahh I misunderstood, yes column level lineage is useful. DBT prefers leveraging macros which sort of breaks this pattern. I think the DBT way would be to better separate fields into upstream models and use table tracking https://github.com/dbt-labs/dbt-core/discussions/4458

Here’s the PR, which includes a what/how/why: https://github.com/dbt-labs/dbt-core/issues/7158

I've attached a link to their documentation. DBT is becoming increasingly popular within the Data Engineering community with over 5k stars on github.

> YAML, pivoting being done in the frontend, no symmetric aggregates

(one of the maintainers of Lightdash) You touched on some of our most interesting problems here! Would be especially interested to hear about what you liked / didn't like about symmetric aggregates in Looker and how you find dev with YAML. If you have an idea of how you'd like these to look in Lightdash, the team would be really open to making that a reality.

For pivoting in the backend, this is coming! Issue here: https://github.com/lightdash/lightdash/issues/2907

What are the 5 hottest dbt Repositories one should star on Github 2022?

dbt is a software framework that sits in the middle of the ELT process. It represents the transformative layer after loading data from an original source. Dbt combines SQL with software engineering principles.

Here are my top5!

- Lightdash (https://github.com/lightdash/lightdash): Lightdash converts dbt models and makes it possible to define and easily visualize additional metrics via a visual interface.

- ⏎ re_data (https://github.com/re-data/re-data): Re-Data is an abstraction layer that helps users monitor dbt projects and their underlying data. For example, you get alerts when a test failed or a data anomaly occurs in a dbt project.

- evidence (https://github.com/evidence-dev/evidence): Evidence is another tool for lightweight BI reporting. With Evidence, you can build simple reports in "medium style" using SQL queries and Markdown.

- Kuwala (https://github.com/kuwala-io/kuwala): With Kuwala, a BI analyst can intuitively build advanced data workflows using a drag-drop interface on top of the modern data stack without coding. Behind the Scenes, the dbt models are generated so that a more experienced engineer can customize the pipelines at any time.

- fal ai (https://github.com/fal-ai/fal): Fal helps to run Python scripts directly from the dbt project. For example, you can load dbt models directly into the Python context which helps to apply Data Science libraries like SKlearn and Prophet in the dbt models.

Lightdash ( https://github.com/lightdash/lightdash ) Lightdash converts dbt models and makes it possible to define and easily visualize additional metrics via a visual interface. The front end helps to understand and extend the underlying SQL queries. Lightdash also visualizes business metrics and makes them shareable with the data team. It is also possible to integrate all data into another visualization tool.

- ⚡️ Lightdash: Lightdash converts dbt models and makes it possible to define and easily visualize additional metrics via a visual interface.

Visualization / Analysis: Lightdash, Superset

Ingestion / ETL: Airbyte, Singer, Jitsu Transformation: dbt Orchestration: Airflow, Dagster Testing: GreatExpectations Observability: Monosi Reverse ETL: Grouparoo, Castled Visualization: Lightdash, Superset

1) An integration with Metabase Cloud is on our roadmap for Q1! We'd love to integrate with Lightdash, but they don't have a public API just yet[1].

2) Several of our customers use us to alert on schema changes in Postgres, specifically so they can get ahead of application database changes that will end up in the warehouse, so you're definitely not alone! Here's a link on how to connect postgres: https://docs.metaplane.dev/docs/postgres

That's an excellent stack and one we kept front and center when building out Metaplane, so definitely let us know if you have any feedback or suggestions here!

[1]: https://github.com/lightdash/lightdash/issues/632

I would recommend lightdash which is essentially an open source Looker clone https://github.com/lightdash/lightdash