Adverity is a fully-integrated data platform for automating the connectivity, transformation, governance & utilization of data at scale.
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dbt
Score 9.0 out of 10
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dbt is an SQL development environment, developed by Fishtown Analytics, now known as dbt Labs. The vendor states that with dbt, analysts take ownership of the entire analytics engineering workflow, from writing data transformation code to deployment and documentation. dbt Core is distributed under the Apache 2.0 license, and paid Teams and Enterprise editions are available.
Adverity is particularly useful if there is a large range of data sets that you want to combine to get an 'overall' view. Previously we had used Google Analytics, but found that this was too useful for our big client accounts that we were working on. So I think that if there is an individual who is responsible for analytics or data, and also a paid media team then this is a tool which is essential. For companies that have limited activity then I think this tool could potentially over-complicate for less reward.
If you can load your data first into your warehouse, dbt is excellent. It does the T(ransformation) part of ELT brilliantly but does not do the E(xtract) or L(oad) part. If you know SQL or your development team knows SQL, it's a framework and extension around that. So, it's easy to learn and easy to hire people with that technical skill (as opposed to specific Informatica, SnapLogic, etc. experience). dbt uses plain text files and integrates with GitHub. You can easily see the changes made between versions. In GUI-based UIs it was always hard to tell what someone had changed. Each "model" is essentially a "SELECT" statement. You never need to do a "CREATE TABLE" or "CREATE VIEW" - it's all done for you, leaving you to work on the business logic. Instead of saying "FROM specific_db.schema.table" you indicate "FROM ref('my_other_model')". It creates an internal dependency diagram you can view in a DAG. When you deploy, the dependencies work like magic in your various environments. They also have great documentation, an active slack community, training, and support. I like the enhancements they have been making and I believe they are headed in a good direction.
I think it would have been more user friendly if there was more labelling capabilities, so that when you are sharing the dashboard they would explain what the data is - rather than depending on someone knowing how to use the dashboards or being there to explain it.
Our teams found that some of the scheduling functionality could be a little big buggy, so this was something that needed extra care and attention, so therefore may be an area that needs to be improved (unless it was just our account and usage).
Slow load times of the dbt cloud environment (they're working on it via a new UI though)
More out-of-the-box solutions for managing procedures, functions, etc would be nice to have, but honestly, it's pretty easy to figure out how to adapt dbt macros
Most ETL pipeline products have a T layer, but dbt just does it better. The transformation is on steroids compared to the others. Also, just allows much more Adhoc solutions for very specific projects. Those ETL tools are probably better on the T part if you don't need too many transforms - also dbt is pretty much free dependent on how you work it, also extremely scalable.
This tool has allowed us to be able to see areas for opportunities, when all of the data has been combined
We were also able to better prioritise actions and where to focus our attention, when we had one view where all of the data was together. This allowed us to deliver better results for our clients, and also have a clearer roadmap of activity
