Open Source | Data Engineering Podcast

Enabling Version Controlled Data Collaboration With TerminusDB - Episode 167

January 11, 2021 tmacey

As data professionals we have a number of tools available for storing, processing, and analyzing data. We also have tools for collaborating on software and analysis, but collaborating on data is still an underserved capability. Gavin Mendel-Gleason encountered this problem first hand while working on the Sesshat databank, leading him to create TerminusDB and TerminusHub. In this episode he explains how the TerminusDB system is architected to provide a versioned graph storage engine that allows for branching and merging of data sets, how that opens up new possibilities for individuals and teams to work together on building new data repositories. This is a fascinating conversation on the technical challenges involved, the opportunities that such as system provides, and the complexities inherent to building a successful business on open source.

Distributed In Memory Processing And Streaming With Hazelcast - Episode 150

September 15, 2020 tmacey

In memory computing provides significant performance benefits, but brings along challenges for managing failures and scaling up. Hazelcast is a platform for managing stateful in-memory storage and computation across a distributed cluster of commodity hardware. On top of this foundation, the Hazelcast team has also built a streaming platform for reliable high throughput data transmission. In this episode Dale Kim shares how Hazelcast is implemented, the use cases that it enables, and how it complements on-disk data management systems.

Simplify Your Data Architecture With The Presto Distributed SQL Engine - Episode 149

September 7, 2020 tmacey

Databases are limited in scope to the information that they directly contain. For analytical use cases you often want to combine data across multiple sources and storage locations. This frequently requires cumbersome and time-consuming data integration. To address this problem Martin Traverso and his colleagues at Facebook built the Presto distributed query engine. In this episode he explains how it is designed to allow for querying and combining data where it resides, the use cases that such an architecture unlocks, and the innovative ways that it is being employed at companies across the world. If you need to work with data in your cloud data lake, your on-premise database, or a collection of flat files, then give this episode a listen and then try out Presto today.

Metadata Management And Integration At LinkedIn With DataHub - Episode 147

August 25, 2020 tmacey

In order to scale the use of data across an organization there are a number of challenges related to discovery, governance, and integration that need to be solved. The key to those solutions is a robust and flexible metadata management system. LinkedIn has gone through several iterations on the most maintainable and scalable approach to metadata, leading them to their current work on DataHub. In this episode Mars Lan and Pardhu Gunnam explain how they designed the platform, how it integrates into their data platforms, and how it is being used to power data discovery and analytics at LinkedIn.

Exploring The TileDB Universal Data Engine - Episode 146

August 17, 2020 tmacey

Most databases are designed to work with textual data, with some special purpose engines that support domain specific formats. TileDB is a data engine that was built to support every type of data by using multi-dimensional arrays as the foundational primitive. In this episode the creator and founder of TileDB shares how he first started working on the underlying technology and the benefits of using a single engine for efficiently storing and querying any form of data. He also discusses the shifts in database architectures from vertically integrated monoliths to separately deployed layers, and the approach he is taking with TileDB cloud to embed the authorization into the storage engine, while providing a flexible interface for compute. This was a great conversation about a different approach to database architecture and how that enables a more flexible way to store and interact with data to power better data sharing and new opportunities for blending specialized domains.

Build More Reliable Distributed Systems By Breaking Them With Jepsen - Episode 143

July 28, 2020 tmacey

A majority of the scalable data processing platforms that we rely on are built as distributed systems. This brings with it a vast number of subtle ways that errors can creep in. Kyle Kingsbury created the Jepsen framework for testing the guarantees of distributed data processing systems and identifying when and why they break. In this episode he shares his approach to testing complex systems, the common challenges that are faced by engineers who build them, and why it is important to understand their limitations. This was a great look at some of the underlying principles that power your mission critical workloads.

Open Source Production Grade Data Integration With Meltano - Episode 141

July 13, 2020 tmacey

The first stage of every data pipeline is extracting the information from source systems. There are a number of platforms for managing data integration, but there is a notable lack of a robust and easy to use open source option. The Meltano project is aiming to provide a solution to that situation. In this episode, project lead Douwe Maan shares the history of how Meltano got started, the motivation for the recent shift in focus, and how it is implemented. The Singer ecosystem has laid the groundwork for a great option to empower teams of all sizes to unlock the value of their Data and Meltano is building the reamining structure to make it a fully featured contender for proprietary systems.

StreamNative Brings Streaming Data To The Cloud Native Landscape With Pulsar - Episode 132

May 11, 2020 tmacey

There have been several generations of platforms for managing streaming data, each with their own strengths and weaknesses, and different areas of focus. Pulsar is one of the recent entrants which has quickly gained adoption and an impressive set of capabilities. In this episode Sijie Guo discusses his motivations for spending so much of his time and energy on contributing to the project and growing the community. His most recent endeavor at StreamNative is focused on combining the capabilities of Pulsar with the cloud native movement to make it easier to build and scale real time messaging systems with built in event processing capabilities. This was a great conversation about the strengths of the Pulsar project, how it has evolved in recent years, and some of the innovative ways that it is being used. Pulsar is a well engineered and robust platform for building the core of any system that relies on durable access to easily scalable streams of data.

Building A New Foundation For CouchDB - Episode 124

March 17, 2020 tmacey

CouchDB is a distributed document database built for scale and ease of operation. With a built-in synchronization protocol and a HTTP interface it has become popular as a backend for web and mobile applications. Created 15 years ago, it has accrued some technical debt which is being addressed with a refactored architecture based on FoundationDB. In this episode Adam Kocoloski shares the history of the project, how it works under the hood, and how the new design will improve the project for our new era of computation. This was an interesting conversation about the challenges of maintaining a large and mission critical project and the work being done to evolve it.

Pay Down Technical Debt In Your Data Pipeline With Great Expectations - Episode 117

January 27, 2020 tmacey

Data pipelines are complicated and business critical pieces of technical infrastructure. Unfortunately they are also complex and difficult to test, leading to a significant amount of technical debt which contributes to slower iteration cycles. In this episode James Campbell describes how he helped create the Great Expectations framework to help you gain control and confidence in your data delivery workflows, the challenges of validating and monitoring the quality and accuracy of your data, and how you can use it in your own environments to improve your ability to move fast.