In this episode Mark is joined by Jake Stein to talk about Stitch Data and their ETL tool for data engineers, the new open-source project Singer and his experiences building a software startup that both partners and competes with the big cloud platform vendors.Stitch DataSinger: Simple, Composable Open-Source ETLSetting the Data Strategy for Your Growing OrganizationThe State of Data EngineeringThe State of Data ScienceWhy our ETL Tool Doesn't Do TransformationsAirflow: a workflow management platformGoodbye RJMetrics, Hello Fishtown AnalyticsEngineers Shouldn’t Write ETL: A Guide to Building a High Functioning Data Science Department

Mark Rittman is joined by Donald Farmer to talk about his work at Microsoft on SQL Server Analysis Services and Integration Services, why he moved to Qlik and the challenges of evolving a BI product strategy from focusing on desktops to focusing on the enterprise, and some advice for customers, software vendors and partners working with data and analytics tools. 

In this episode Mark is joined by Tristan Handy from Fishtown Analytics to talk about building-out analytics functions in high-growth startups, and three related blog posts he wrote on this topic.Fishtown Analyticsdbt (data build tool) and Fishtown Analytics Github repos“The Startup Founder’s Guide to Analytics”“What are the steps / tools in setting up a modern, SaaS-based BI infrastructure?”“Building a Mature Analytics Workflow: The Analyst Collective Viewpoint”

Mark is joined by Qubit colleague Will Browne to talk about a recent academic paper co-authored with Mike Swarbrick Jones on conversion optimisation techniques in the eCommerce industry. Using analytics and statistical analysis On 20 billion "user journeys" recorded in Qubit's Google Cloud Platform-hosted Customer Data Store this paper compares techniques using data and machine learning to those based on traditional sales techniques to see whether data trumps emotion ... or both have their place.Analysis of 2 billion user stories explains how to compete with AmazonThe meta-analysis of 6,700 ecommerce experimentsThe Journey to Personalization at Scale

Mark is joined by returning special guest Dan McClary to talk about data modeling and database design on distributed query engines such as Google BigQuery, the underlying Dremel technology and columnar storage format that enables this cloud distributed data warehouse-as-a-service platform to scale to petabyte-size tables spanning tens of thousands of servers, and techniques to optimize BigQuery table joins using nested fields, table partitioning and denormalization.Dremel: Interactive Analysis of Web-Scale DatasetsBigQuery under the hoodInside Capacitor, BigQuery’s next-generation columnar storage formatDrill To Detail Ep.2. 'Future Of SQL On Hadoop', With Special Guest Dan McClaryGoogle BigQuery, Large Table Joins and How Nested, Repeated Values and the Capacitor Storage Format (and Looker) Saves the Day

Oracle's Jack Berkowitz joins Mark Rittman to talk about a new category of continuously adapting, self-learning applications being built-out by Oracle that use machine learning together with enterprise and third-party data to create a new generation of intelligent HR, CX, SCM and ERP SaaS apps."Adaptive Intelligence: What You Need to Know"Oracle's Adaptive Intelligence Apps product homepage

Stewart Bryson returns to the show to join Mark Rittman to discuss new-world BI and data warehousing development using Google BigQuery and Amazon Athena, Apache Kafka and StreamSets, and talks about his experiences with Looker, the cloud-native BI tool that brings semantic modeling and modern development practices to the world of business intelligence. 

Mark Rittman is joined in this episode by Independent Consultant Adrian Ward to talk about Oracle Business Analytics, Data Visualization, the BI Applications and his new book on Oracle Business Intelligence 12c.

Mark Rittman is joined by Gwen Shapira from Confluent to talk about Apache Kafka, streaming data integration and how it differs from batch-based, GUI-developed ETL development, the problem with architects, exactly-once processing and how data governance is coming to Kafka development with Confluent's new schema registry server. 

Mark Rittman is joined by Maxime Beauchemin to talk about analytics and data integration at Airbnb, the Apache Airflow and Superset open-source projects he helped launch and now works with day-to-day at Airbnb , and his recent Medium article on "The Rise of the Data Engineer"."The Rise of the Data Engineer" blog by Maxime BeaucheminApache AirflowAirbnb Superset"Engineers Shouldn’t Write ETL: A Guide to Building a High Functioning Data Science Department" blog by Jeff Magnusson