What is some common, or best-in-class, software fo...
# randomw
will_johnson
07/06/2022, 7:50 PMWhat is some common, or best-in-class, software for building and running reports on top of a data warehouse? Tableau doesn't seem to be the right tool for row-level data.
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visch
07/06/2022, 8:05 PM"best in class" is very subjective of course. I'll give you some "wrong" answers so folks can help out, category I think of when you say "reports" is refereed to generally as a "BI tool" you may be after something else
Top two in my head are
• Looker
• PowerBI
If you look at Open Source I"m a fan of
• Preset
• Lightdash
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thomas_briggs
07/06/2022, 8:27 PMI've been experimenting with Metabase lately... I quite like it.
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will_johnson
07/06/2022, 8:41 PMNot BI, no. When I want to run a report (basically a fancy query) that is a million rows and then export that, I have found that Tableau isn't great. We moved off of PowerBI to Tableau before trying to accomplish this in PowerBI but I imagine it is the similar in that it is great for summations, metrics, etc. but not as good at loading and displaying the whole data set.
will_johnson
07/06/2022, 8:42 PMFor example, maybe finance wants a monthly report that combines all clients in CRM with all of their billing data from the accounting system. Ideally, I would write that once and then they could have a log in and download that themselves whenever.
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thomas_briggs
07/06/2022, 8:43 PMSounds to me like you want dbt plus... any ol' reporting tool.
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will_johnson
07/06/2022, 8:45 PMpretty much. Any suggestions for any ol' reporting tool? Someone joked about Crystal Reports when I asked this question.
will_johnson
07/06/2022, 8:45 PMI have heard of Metabase but never really looked at it. Maybe I should give it a spin.
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thomas_briggs
07/06/2022, 8:46 PMMetabase, honestly... materialize the data in the DB using dbt, then let people slice/dice/explore/export it with Metabase.
thomas_briggs
07/06/2022, 8:46 PMBut seriously, pretty much any "reporting" tool will do what you want once you've materialized the data in the DB. 🤷🏻♂️
thomas_briggs
07/06/2022, 8:47 PMHeck, point Excel at it.
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will_johnson
07/06/2022, 8:48 PMAt some point I feel like BI overtook reporting as the thing you do with cross-system data. 😕
will_johnson
07/06/2022, 8:49 PMWe do a lot of smashing spreadsheets together at my firm and I'd like to put an end to that as much as I can. Will give Metabase a look.
will_johnson
07/06/2022, 8:52 PMLightdash looks pretty cool and lol at "Put business users on rails."
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aaronsteers
07/08/2022, 5:02 PMFor reports with a markdown and for a git-friendly approach, I've been very pleased with evidence.dev
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will_johnson
07/08/2022, 9:21 PMI remember seeing that on HN and being really impressed.
will_johnson
07/08/2022, 9:22 PMI think we are going to be able to use Secoda for what we are trying to accomplish. The UI was throwing me off by making it look like you could only get 100 rows of results but support informed me that you can download all results.