The Dataiku platform unifies all data work, from analytics to Generative AI. It can modernize enterprise analytics and accelerate time to insights with visual, cloud-based tooling for data preparation, visualization, and workflow automation.
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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.
Dataiku DSS is very well suited to handle large datasets and projects which requires a huge team to deliver results. This allows users to collaborate with each other while working on individual tasks. The workflow is easily streamlined and every action is backed up, allowing users to revert to specific tasks whenever required. While Dataiku DSS works seamlessly with all types of projects dealing with structured datasets, I haven't come across projects using Dataiku dealing with images/audio signals. But a workaround would be to store the images as vectors and perform the necessary tasks.
The prerequisite is that you have a supported database/data warehouse and have already found a way to ingest your raw data. Then dbt is very well suited to manage your transformation logic if the people using it are familiar with SQL. If you want to benefit from bringing engineering practices to data, dbt is a great fit. It can bring CI/CD practices, version control, automated testing, documentation generation, etc. It is not so well suited if the people managing the transformation logic do not like to code (in SQL) but prefer graphical user interfaces.
As I have described earlier, the intuitiveness of this tool makes it great as well as the variety of users that can use this tool. Also, the plugins available in their repository provide solutions to various data science problems.
It requires proficiency with SQL coding and with git practices, but with these prerequisites, it is easy to use. Especially with the dbt cloud, you get a nice interface that makes all the administrative tasks like scheduling jobs quite easy. I also like the built-in SQL editor with syntax highlighting and auto-completion.
The support team is very helpful, and even when we discover the missing features, after providing enough rational reasons and requirements, they put into it their development pipeline for the future release.
Strictly for Data Science operations, Anaconda can be considered as a subset of Dataiku DSS. While Anaconda supports Python and R programming languages, Dataiku also provides this facility, but also provides GUI to creates models with just a click of a button. This provides the flexibility to users who do not wish to alter the model hyperparameters in greater depths. Writing codes to extract meaningful data is time consuming compared to Dataiku's ability to perform feature engineering and data transformation through click of a button.
I actually don't know what the alternative to dbt is. I'm sure one must exist other than more 'roll your own' options like Apache Airflow, say, bu tin terms of super easy managed/cloud data transforms, dbt really does seem to be THE tool to use. It's $50/month per dev, BUT there's a FREE version for 1 dev seat with no read-only access for anyone else, so you can always start with that and then buy yourself a seat later.
