dbt vs. SnapLogic

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.

Incentivized

Snaplogic is unique from other IPASS tools if you're very sensitive about data security as they have an on-premise option where your data never needs to leave your data center. And data pipelines can be quickly created if Snaplogic has the requisite connector to your data sources. On the downside, if you're transforming a large amount of data for example in training machine learning models, a tool with elastic compute capability is more appropriate.

• dbt supports version control through GIT, this allows teams to collaborate and track the data transformation logic.
• dbt allows us to build data models which helps to break complex transformation logic into simple and smaller logic.
• dbt is completely based on SQL which allows data analyst and data engineers to build the transformation logic.
• dbt can be easily integrated with snowflake.

Incentivized

• Easy access to any type of source system. Data could be in any format.
• Very beautiful visual representation of transforms that makes it super easy to use it by any non developer.
• It can be run in cloud or on-premise. helping you choose your comfort of security.
• Has pretty good customer support and have recently started their community forum as well.

Incentivized

• Field-level lineage (currently at table level)
• Documentation inheritance - if a field is documented the downstream field of the same name could inherit the doc info
• Adding python model support (in beta now)

Incentivized

• They need to have a way to connect to GitHub to allow the users to maintain their version control in GitHub. This is a missing functionality.
• As pipelines become complex, it's difficult to have all the snaps stitched together - just like to see it done differently.
• They do not have a way to start/stop a preview. This is hard to use, especially if you have to stop an accidental preview invocation.

Incentivized

This has been hands down the BEST software company I have ever used and dealt with. I am a 25 year IT veteran at this college. They go above and beyond in soliciting our feedback/input and proactively follow up about bugs, issues, etc. I have given multiple potential clients my thoughts and after seeing the SL demo they all sign up. I appreciate their support model, it's REFRESHING!

Incentivized

dbt is very easy to use. Basically if you can write SQL, you will be able to use dbt to get what you need done. Of course more advanced users with more technical skills can do more things.

Incentivized

It is very powerful but has a steep learning curve

Incentivized

They can be prompt but they have not been as useful as I've wanted. We had a bug that affected many of our customers through an API connection between SnapLogic and our platform. Eventually they were able to figure it out, but it took a long time of negotiating between our engineering team and theirs. Additionally, we installed the SnapLogic groundplex for our customers and we've run into a bunch of problems of connectivity. If SnapLogic offered to be on those calls with our clients to troubleshoot how to fix these problems, I would give them a better grade here.

Incentivized

The groundplex in our VPC is very nice for security reasons and the SnapLogic team was extremely helpful during our implementation

Incentivized

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.

Incentivized

We opted for SnapLogic due its ease of use and the flexibility it offers, it was the platform that was strongest in both application integration and data integration and both were use cases we wanted to be able to cover.

• Simplified our BI layer for faster load times
• Increased the quality of data reaching our end users
• Makes complex transformations manageable

Incentivized

• We have cut development time down by at least 70%
• The software was more on the expensive side at renewal which required some further approvals to be sought for the spend
• More developers are able to build and use Snaplogic pipelines in their projects

Incentivized