February Edition ⚾

💫 A small change has been made to the newsletter

I have decided to get rid of the ‘Cool Jobs’ section for now, in order to streamline the newsletter. If you really liked the section, or have any other feedback please be sure to let me know here.

Omni

What is it: Omni Analytics has introduced a native dbt IDE (Integrated Development Environment) that can be accessed right inside the tool. The IDE allows you to browse, create, and edit dbt models within the Omni interface.

• The coolest thing with the deep dbt integration that Omni has is the ability to switch between dbt environments (think prod and dev). This will give developers the agility to quickly test the changes they plan to ship by reducing time spent in switching environments.

• For those of you that love your git commits like we do, there is two way integration to ensure CI/CD compliance, from within the IDE.

There is a lot more cool stuff you can do with this IDE, and you can read all about this release here.

Why is it relevant: Ever heard of the thin BI architecture? No worries if not, but it essentially means that your BI (visualization) layer is decoupled from the semantic (data modelling) layer. This gives you the ability to pick and choose best of breed tooling in your data analytics stack, based on your consumption patterns. Essentially, you can avoid vendor lock-ins and potentially save money (who doesn’t like that?).

Omni-dbt is a great case study in thin client architecture. If you are still working with a legacy BI tool, you may want to just peek outside to see the possibilities.

Metabase

What is it: Metabase has introduced the embedded analytics SDK for react. There has been a steady stream of BI tools that have been focusing on beefing up their features in the embedding space. If you haven’t heard of embedded analytics, think exposing your dashboards in a website or any mobile application (not the BI software’s mobile application). Potential use-cases include exposing analytics to a public audience (outside an organization), such as reporting government statistics on COVID-19.

What caught our eyes with the Metabase SDK is the level of customization that can be achieved including embedding individual visuals (which isn’t currently supported by large players including Power BI and Tableau) as well as the theme customization which aids a more consistent UI/UX.

You can learn all about the feature here.

Why is it relevant: Embedding remains an under served segment when it comes to traditional BI players. This is more so out of choice, as the market for embedding is still in infancy. However, Metabase is showing new possibilities with embedding that goes past the generic white labelled solutions. This should appeal to website designers and UI/UX professionals who might appreciate the ability to customize colors, tooltips, shadows, and more.

Power BI

What is it: The February 2025 Power BI update brings an update to visual calcs, which now supports conditional formatting. Visual calculations are Power BI’s way of making it easier for non-technical crowd to start playing around with existing visuals. Visual calculations simplifies some of the most intense calculations in DAX (think Windows function), by providing alternative simpler custom functions (such as ‘Previous’).

This update allows users to use visual calculation measures to set up conditional formatting. This would serve as a great addition for users looking to enhance their experience with visual calculations.

Why is it relevant: Visual Calculations provide a lower barrier of entry to the world of development in Power BI. There has been a longstanding gripe with DAX being too obscure to understand, which visual calcs aim to solve. Power BI has been bringing updates to the functionality, which means that it is being used actively in the ecosystem. We just wish DAX would take a leaf out of visual calcs' playbook and start simplifying itself a bit.

Read all about it here.

Fabric

What is it: Fabric Admin APIs have got some updates to audit and manage tenant settings and audit existing settings at a granular level.

Updates include:

• Authentication can now be done through Service Principal or Managed identities.

• New Fabric Admin APIs including Update Tenant Settings, Read APIs for Tenant settings overrides, and Read, Update & Delete APIs for managing Capacity Tenant Setting overrides.

• GetDatasourcesAsAdmin API’s performance has been updated to 300 requests/hour.

These APIs offer a programmatic alternative for managing Tenant settings down to the workspace level. If you want a quick primer on Tenant setting REST APIs, here is a great video you can refer to.

Read the entire release here.

Databricks

What is it: Databricks SQL February 2025 update included a roundup of features launched in the last three months. It was the SQL Editor update that stood out with a lineup of features including Git integration for queries, ability to see different SQL statements side by side for output comparison, and improved commenting with @mentions.

On the cost management side, Databricks now provides a pre-built AI/BI dashboard to understand your spend and setup alerts. Additionally, in the spirit of monitoring, Databricks has also rolled out completed queries monitoring on the SQL warehouse UI. This new chart shows the number of queries finished in a selected timeframe, which can be analyzed against the total number of queries run to determine warehouse health.

Read more about the feature here.

Data events action calendar 📅

• Databricks Dev Connect is happening in Mountain View, CA on March 12th. Details here.

• Sigma Data Apps conference is happening virtually on March 13th. Details here.

• dbt Developer Day sessions are on March 19th and 20th. Details here.

• Mongodb local is happening in Toronto on April 15th. Details here.

• Google Cloud Next is happening in Las Vegas from April 9-11, 2025. Details here.

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