Scraping data from PDFs is a right of passage if you work in data. Someone somewhere always needs help getting invoices parsed, contracts read through, or dozens of other use cases. Most of us will turn to Python and our trusty list of Python libraries and start plugging away. Of course, there are many challenges…
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There are plenty of statistics about the speed at which we are creating data in today’s modern world. On the flip side of all that data creation is a need to manage all of that data and thats where data teams come in. But leading these data teams is challenging and yet many new data…
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Much of the data we have used for analysis in traditional enterprises has been structured data. It’s easy for humans to break down, understand, and, in turn, find insights from it. However, much of the data that is being created and will be created comes in some form of unstructured format. However, the digital era…
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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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