A key responsibility for any data team is to understand the core metrics driving their business. Starting from the top, these metrics often include figures like gross revenue and expenses. However, these high-level metrics can feel too far removed and abstract from the actual business. Many companies, therefore, break down these top-line metrics into more…
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Recently, I’ve encountered a few projects that used AWS DMS, which is almost like an ELT solution. Whether it was moving data from a local database instance to S3 or some other data storage layer. It was interesting to see AWS DMS used in this manner. But it’s not what DMS was built for. As…
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Leading data teams can be challenging. You’ve got management and non-technical teams constantly reaching out with ad-hoc data requests; you’re likely trying to figure out what tools will work best and not blow the bank. Not to mention, you’ve got to bridge the gap between business and technology. All while trying to grow your data…
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If you work in data, then at some point in your career, you’ll likely need to parse data from a PDF. You might need to parse thousands of PDFs in order to pull out invoice information. Or maybe you need to parse financial filing documents such as 10-Ks. This can seem challenging at first. Afterall,…
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We are still in the early days of data and the value it can add to companies. You’ll read plenty of statistics about how much value data can drive and how far behind companies that aren’t using data are. And as a data consultant, I have helped companies find that value in their data. It…
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One of the holy grails that many data teams seem to chase is real-time data analytics. After all, if you can have real-time analytics, you can make better decisions faster. However, there often is a conflation between real-time data analytics and stream processing. These are two different concepts that are crucial to understanding how to…
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If you work in data, then AI is everywhere at this point. But whether AI is hype or reality doesn’t change the fact that data engineers will play a major role in ensuring that the data sets that are utilized for the growing use cases are usable both by machines and humans. Whether that data…
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What would you do if you became the head or director of data for a 1,000-person company? Yesterday, you were plugging along as an analyst, and now, suddenly, you have all these new responsibilities. Figuring out where to start is part of the job. You’d probably feel a strong temptation to freak out. Who wouldn’t?…
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Running a successful data team is hard. Data teams are expected to juggle a combination of ad-hoc requests, big bet projects, migrations, etc. All while keeping up with the latest changes in technology. In the past few years I have gotten to work with dozens of teams and see how various directors and managers deal…
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How companies data model varies widely. They might say they use Kimball dimensional modeling. However, when you look in their data warehouse the only part you recognize is the word fact and dim. Over the past near decade, I have worked for and with different companies that have used various methods to capture this data.…
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