Summary The most interesting and challenging bugs always happen in production, but recreating them is a constant challenge due to differences in the data that you are working with. Building your own scripts to replicate data from production is time consuming and error-prone. Tonic is a platform designed to solve the problem of having reliable, production-like data available for developing and testing your software, analytics, and machine learning projects. In this episode Adam Kamor explores the...
Jan 22, 2023•46 min•Ep. 359
Summary The modern data stack has made it more economical to use enterprise grade technologies to power analytics at organizations of every scale. Unfortunately it has also introduced new overhead to manage the full experience as a single workflow. At the Modern Data Company they created the DataOS platform as a means of driving your full analytics lifecycle through code, while providing automatic knowledge graphs and data discovery. In this episode Srujan Akula explains how the system is implem...
Jan 16, 2023•49 min•Ep. 358
Summary Managing end-to-end data flows becomes complex and unwieldy as the scale of data and its variety of applications in an organization grows. Part of this complexity is due to the transformation and orchestration of data living in disparate systems. The team at Upsolver is taking aim at this problem with the latest iteration of their platform in the form of SQLake. In this episode Ori Rafael explains how they are automating the creation and scheduling of orchestration flows and their relate...
Jan 08, 2023•44 min•Ep. 357
Summary Making effective use of data requires proper context around the information that is being used. As the size and complexity of your organization increases the difficulty of ensuring that everyone has the necessary knowledge about how to get their work done scales exponentially. Wikis and intranets are a common way to attempt to solve this problem, but they are frequently ineffective. Rehgan Avon co-founded AlignAI to help address this challenge through a more purposeful platform designed ...
Dec 29, 2022•59 min•Ep. 356
Summary With all of the messaging about treating data as a product it is becoming difficult to know what that even means. Vishal Singh is the head of products at Starburst which means that he has to spend all of his time thinking and talking about the details of product thinking and its application to data. In this episode he shares his thoughts on the strategic and tactical elements of moving your work as a data professional from being task-oriented to being product-oriented and the long term i...
Dec 29, 2022•59 min•Ep. 355
Summary Encryption and security are critical elements in data analytics and machine learning applications. We have well developed protocols and practices around data that is at rest and in motion, but security around data in use is still severely lacking. Recognizing this shortcoming and the capabilities that could be unlocked by a robust solution Rishabh Poddar helped to create Opaque Systems as an outgrowth of his PhD studies. In this episode he shares the work that he and his team have done t...
Dec 26, 2022•1 hr 8 min•Ep. 353
Summary Five years of hosting the Data Engineering Podcast has provided Tobias Macey with a wealth of insight into the work of building and operating data systems at a variety of scales and for myriad purposes. In order to condense that acquired knowledge into a format that is useful to everyone Scott Hirleman turns the tables in this episode and asks Tobias about the tactical and strategic aspects of his experiences applying those lessons to the work of building a data platform from scratch. An...
Dec 26, 2022•1 hr 12 min•Ep. 354
Summary The data ecosystem has seen a constant flurry of activity for the past several years, and it shows no signs of slowing down. With all of the products, techniques, and buzzwords being discussed it can be easy to be overcome by the hype. In this episode Juan Sequeda and Tim Gasper from data.world share their views on the core principles that you can use to ground your work and avoid getting caught in the hype cycles. Announcements Hello and welcome to the Data Engineering Podcast, the show...
Dec 19, 2022•1 hr 5 min•Ep. 351
Summary One of the reasons that data work is so challenging is because no single person or team owns the entire process. This introduces friction in the process of collecting, processing, and using data. In order to reduce the potential for broken pipelines some teams have started to adopt the idea of data contracts. In this episode Abe Gong brings his experiences with the Great Expectations project and community to discuss the technical and organizational considerations involved in implementing...
Dec 19, 2022•47 min•Ep. 352
Preamble This is a cross-over episode from our new show The Machine Learning Podcast , the show about going from idea to production with machine learning. Summary Data is one of the core ingredients for machine learning, but the format in which it is understandable to humans is not a useful representation for models. Embedding vectors are a way to structure data in a way that is native to how models interpret and manipulate information. In this episode Frank Liu shares how the Towhee library sim...
Dec 12, 2022•54 min•Ep. 350
Summary One of the most critical aspects of software projects is managing its data. Managing the operational concerns for your database can be complex and expensive, especially if you need to scale to large volumes of data, high traffic, or geographically distributed usage. Planetscale is a serverless option for your MySQL workloads that lets you focus on your applications without having to worry about managing the database or fight with differences between development and production. In this ep...
Dec 12, 2022•50 min•Ep. 349
Summary Business intelligence is the foremost application of data in organizations of all sizes. The typical conception of how it is accessed is through a web or desktop application running on a powerful laptop. Zing Data is building a mobile native platform for business intelligence. This opens the door for busy employees to access and analyze their company information away from their desk, but it has the more powerful effect of bringing first-class support to companies operating in mobile-firs...
Dec 05, 2022•47 min•Ep. 348
Summary The term "real-time data" brings with it a combination of excitement, uncertainty, and skepticism. The promise of insights that are always accurate and up to date is appealing to organizations, but the technical realities to make it possible have been complex and expensive. In this episode Arjun Narayan explains how the technical barriers to adopting real-time data in your analytics and applications have become surmountable by organizations of all sizes. Announcements Hello and welcome t...
Dec 05, 2022•50 min•Ep. 347
Summary The data ecosystem has been growing rapidly, with new communities joining and bringing their preferred programming languages to the mix. This has led to inefficiencies in how data is stored, accessed, and shared across process and system boundaries. The Arrow project is designed to eliminate wasted effort in translating between languages, and Voltron Data was created to help grow and support its technology and community. In this episode Wes McKinney shares the ways that Arrow and its rel...
Nov 28, 2022•50 min•Ep. 346
Summary The most expensive part of working with massive data sets is the work of retrieving and processing the files that contain the raw information. FeatureBase (formerly Pilosa) avoids that overhead by converting the data into bitmaps. In this episode Matt Jaffee explains how to model your data as bitmaps and the benefits that this representation provides for fast aggregate computation. He also discusses the improvements that have been incorporated into FeatureBase to simplify integration wit...
Nov 28, 2022•59 min•Ep. 345
Summary The majority of blog posts and presentations about data engineering and analytics assume that the consumers of those efforts are internal business users accessing an environment controlled by the business. In this episode Ian Schweer shares his experiences at Riot Games supporting player-focused features such as machine learning models and recommeder systems that are deployed as part of the game binary. He explains the constraints that he and his team are faced with and the various chall...
Nov 21, 2022•1 hr 1 min•Ep. 344
Summary The problems that are easiest to fix are the ones that you prevent from happening in the first place. Sifflet is a platform that brings your entire data stack into focus to improve the reliability of your data assets and empower collaboration across your teams. In this episode CEO and founder Salma Bakouk shares her views on the causes and impacts of "data entropy" and how you can tame it before it leads to failures. Announcements Hello and welcome to the Data Engineering Podcast, the sh...
Nov 21, 2022•47 min•Ep. 343
Summary Building data products is an undertaking that has historically required substantial investments of time and talent. With the rise in cloud platforms and self-serve data technologies the barrier of entry is dropping. Shane Gibson co-founded AgileData to make analytics accessible to companies of all sizes. In this episode he explains the design of the platform and how it builds on agile development principles to help you focus on delivering value. Announcements Hello and welcome to the Dat...
Nov 14, 2022•1 hr 13 min•Ep. 342
Summary CreditKarma builds data products that help consumers take advantage of their credit and financial capabilities. To make that possible they need a reliable data platform that empowers all of the organization’s stakeholders. In this episode Vishnu Venkataraman shares the journey that he and his team have taken to build and evolve their systems and improve the product offerings that they are able to support. Announcements Hello and welcome to the Data Engineering Podcast, the show about mod...
Nov 14, 2022•52 min•Ep. 341
Summary A lot of the work that goes into data engineering is trying to make sense of the "data exhaust" from other applications and services. There is an undeniable amount of value and utility in that information, but it also introduces significant cost and time requirements. In this episode Nick King discusses how you can be intentional about data creation in your applications and services to reduce the friction and errors involved in building data products and ML applications. He also describe...
Nov 07, 2022•1 hr 5 min•Ep. 339
Summary Despite the best efforts of data engineers, data is as messy as the real world. Entity resolution and fuzzy matching are powerful utilities for cleaning up data from disconnected sources, but it has typically required custom development and training machine learning models. Sonal Goyal created and open-sourced Zingg as a generalized tool for data mastering and entity resolution to reduce the effort involved in adopting those practices. In this episode she shares the story behind the proj...
Nov 07, 2022•47 min•Ep. 340
Summary Business intelligence has grown beyond its initial manifestation as dashboards and reports. In its current incarnation it has become a ubiquitous need for analytics and opportunities to answer questions with data. In this episode Amir Orad discusses the Sisense platform and how it facilitates the embedding of analytics and data insights in every aspect of organizational and end-user experiences. Announcements Hello and welcome to the Data Engineering Podcast, the show about modern data m...
Oct 31, 2022•54 min•Ep. 338
Summary One of the most impactful technologies for data analytics in recent years has been dbt. It’s hard to have a conversation about data engineering or analysis without mentioning it. Despite its widespread adoption there are still rough edges in its workflow that cause friction for data analysts. To help simplify the adoption and management of dbt projects Nandam Karthik helped create Optimus. In this episode he shares his experiences working with organizations to adopt analytics engineering...
Oct 30, 2022•40 min•Ep. 337
Summary Agile methodologies have been adopted by a majority of teams for building software applications. Applying those same practices to data can prove challenging due to the number of systems that need to be included to implement a complete feature. In this episode Shane Gibson shares practical advice and insights from his years of experience as a consultant and engineer working in data about how to adopt agile principles in your data work so that you can move faster and provide more value to ...
Oct 23, 2022•1 hr 12 min•Ep. 336
Summary The database market has seen unprecedented activity in recent years, with new options addressing a variety of needs being introduced on a nearly constant basis. Despite that, there are a handful of databases that continue to be adopted due to their proven reliability and robust features. MariaDB is one of those default options that has continued to grow and innovate while offering a familiar and stable experience. In this episode field CTO Manjot Singh shares his experiences as an early ...
Oct 23, 2022•52 min•Ep. 335
Summary Logistics and supply chains are under increased stress and scrutiny in recent years. In order to stay ahead of customer demands, businesses need to be able to react quickly and intelligently to changes, which requires fast and accurate insights into their operations. Pathway is a streaming database engine that embeds artificial intelligence into the storage, with functionality designed to support the spatiotemporal data that is crucial for shipping and logistics. In this episode Adrian K...
Oct 16, 2022•1 hr 3 min•Ep. 334
Summary The "data lakehouse" architecture balances the scalability and flexibility of data lakes with the ease of use and transaction support of data warehouses. Dremio is one of the companies leading the development of products and services that support the open lakehouse. In this episode Jason Hughes explains what it means for a lakehouse to be "open" and describes the different components that the Dremio team build and contribute to. Announcements Hello and welcome to the Data Engineering Pod...
Oct 16, 2022•51 min•Ep. 333
Summary The core of any data platform is the centralized storage and processing layer. For many that is a data warehouse, but in order to support a diverse and constantly changing set of uses and technologies the data lakehouse is a paradigm that offers a useful balance of scale and cost, with performance and ease of use. In order to make the data lakehouse available to a wider audience the team at Iomete built an all-in-one service that handles management and integration of the various technolo...
Oct 10, 2022•55 min•Ep. 332
Summary For any business that wants to stay in operation, the most important thing they can do is understand their customers. American Express has invested substantial time and effort in their Customer 360 product to achieve that understanding. In this episode Purvi Shah, the VP of Enterprise Big Data Platforms at American Express, explains how they have invested in the cloud to power this visibility and the complex suite of integrations they have built and maintained across legacy and modern sy...
Oct 10, 2022•41 min•Ep. 331
Summary The global economy is dependent on complex and dynamic networks of supply chains powered by sophisticated logistics. This requires a significant amount of data to track shipments and operational characteristics of materials and goods. Roambee is a platform that collects, integrates, and analyzes all of that information to provide companies with the critical insights that businesses need to stay running, especially in a time of such constant change. In this episode Roambee CEO, Sanjay Sha...
Oct 03, 2022•1 hr•Ep. 330
