The headlining feature seems to be that it has a dark and a light theme. This isn’t very encouraging for the rest of the product. I’m sure there’s a lot of good stuff here, but themes aren’t important enough to be the first feature mentioned.
Show HN: Open-Source Business Intelligence for BigQuery – Looker Alternative
11–20 of 46 posts
Re: Show HN: Open-Source Business Intelligence for BigQuery – Looker Alternative
#12@akalitenya are you even in the clear with this? Some of the Old LookML syntax is an exact copy. But more importantly, the challenge for any such tool is to go beyond use by 2-3 people. At 2-3 people anything will work. Where BI tools (open source and close source) struggle is scale: having all the right features for, essentially, a group of users who actually don't know how to work with data (did I just say that alo…
By support do you mean performance/load or array of features/team tools to be effective, support different use cases? Curious what you mean by 20 user cap for Chartio.
Re: Show HN: Open-Source Business Intelligence for BigQuery – Looker Alternative
#13@akalitenya are you even in the clear with this? Some of the Old LookML syntax is an exact copy. But more importantly, the challenge for any such tool is to go beyond use by 2-3 people. At 2-3 people anything will work. Where BI tools (open source and close source) struggle is scale: having all the right features for, essentially, a group of users who actually don't know how to work with data (did I just say that alo…
I agree with pretty much everything you've said. However, as someone who has used Chartio extensively, I'd say 20 is wayyy too low. It can definitely handle 100s. But, like you said, 1,000s is a struggle for anyone. Also, if you think this is a rip off of LookML, you should take a look at what GitLab is doing with Meltano. They completely jacked LookML.
Please, do you mind sharing what exactly makes a BI solution difficult/struggling for 1,000+ users?
Is it something technically related or more business/feature related?
Re: Show HN: Open-Source Business Intelligence for BigQuery – Looker Alternative
#14@akalitenya are you even in the clear with this? Some of the Old LookML syntax is an exact copy. But more importantly, the challenge for any such tool is to go beyond use by 2-3 people. At 2-3 people anything will work. Where BI tools (open source and close source) struggle is scale: having all the right features for, essentially, a group of users who actually don't know how to work with data (did I just say that alo…
Why discourage an alternative? We've already seen there is demand for libre analytics tools as an alternative to google analytics. I'd use this product in the lower range as well <100 person company. I say go for it, looker is doing fine they won't care or be phased by this at all.
Re: Show HN: Open-Source Business Intelligence for BigQuery – Looker Alternative
#15The headlining feature seems to be that it has a dark and a light theme. This isn’t very encouraging for the rest of the product. I’m sure there’s a lot of good stuff here, but themes aren’t important enough to be the first feature mentioned.
+1 it should not be the first feature listed, bump that down
Re: Show HN: Open-Source Business Intelligence for BigQuery – Looker Alternative
#16BigQuery PM here. Nice work!
Here's a recently built Graphite connector as well:
Re: Show HN: Open-Source Business Intelligence for BigQuery – Looker Alternative
#17@akalitenya are you even in the clear with this? Some of the Old LookML syntax is an exact copy. But more importantly, the challenge for any such tool is to go beyond use by 2-3 people. At 2-3 people anything will work. Where BI tools (open source and close source) struggle is scale: having all the right features for, essentially, a group of users who actually don't know how to work with data (did I just say that alo…
> Some of the Old LookML syntax is an exact copy.
I met the online Looker demo a few years ago when I was looking for a business intelligence tool for another project.
Looker has a closed source code, so I did not see what algorithm is used to build queries.
I kept those LookML features that I understood and liked. However, in some places LookML is confusing (for example - references and aliases). I made them differently.
Later Looker quit using YAML.
> Very few BI products have actually surpassed 100 users at target installations. And beyond 1,000 is a real challenge that only few, and even then with a lot of assistance, can support: Tableau, Looker, Microstrategy, maybe Birst, maybe Domo.
Scaling that size is not a top priority right now.
> Also, a combination of BI with LookML is a complicated product.
You should have told me this a couple of years ago. It seemed pretty simple.
> So with all that, the question is, is it really worth the struggle?
Yes, If people will use it.
> What's the end vision for supporting this?
In future - maybe "skinny" or "thin" option mentioned here - https://medium.com/open-consensus/2-open-core-definition-exa...
>Why should someone who implements BI for a living bet on this product?
If you can not afford Looker (like me) and want to use similar product.
Re: Show HN: Open-Source Business Intelligence for BigQuery – Looker Alternative
#18Will this handle (repeatable) “record” (struct/array) data types natively?
/disclaimer: work in google cloud
Re: Show HN: Open-Source Business Intelligence for BigQuery – Looker Alternative
#19Link to the open source part? I can't seem to find any on the site...
In mobile, it doesn't seem to appear til you rotate your phone, but it's there in desktop view.
Re: Show HN: Open-Source Business Intelligence for BigQuery – Looker Alternative
#20Earlier quoted context omitted.
I agree with pretty much everything you've said. However, as someone who has used Chartio extensively, I'd say 20 is wayyy too low. It can definitely handle 100s. But, like you said, 1,000s is a struggle for anyone. Also, if you think this is a rip off of LookML, you should take a look at what GitLab is doing with Meltano. They completely jacked LookML.
Please, do you mind sharing what exactly makes a BI solution difficult/struggling for 1,000+ users? Is it something technically related or more business/feature related?
mmmm, both!
Tech-wise, data stacks are complicated. Hundreds of pre-existing tools, with many owners and diverse interests. BI is where they all meet. With some organizations its easy to build a central data warehouse, but in a large corporate environment that's a dream. Imagine how many data warehouses an organization like Microsoft might have? OK, MS is too large - how about Expedia or Zillow? Thousands? So you connect a tool like Looker--that was designed for 2-10 connections--to a thousand? How do you even administer all the connections? How do you govern access? Access permissions at Looker (and other BI tools) are great, but it would take you 10 years to set them up for 1,000 DBs. And what about tool access? Some want SSH tunneling, others want complete on-prem. Some need Google authentication, while others want one through a pre-existing corporate login. Most large organizations typically end up building--or hiring someone to build--their own custom solutions on top of these tools. Such custom solutions are bigger projects than the implementation of a BI tool to begin with. Oh, and most also fail. The success of a BI in an enterprise environment is partly good sales/marketing/support, but a big part is due to the product achieving some form of maturity with all this side tech--the stuff totally not core to the analytics itself.
Business-wise, try getting people with diverse backgrounds agree on common terminology. Let's take marketing for instance. Should be easy, no? But hey, marketing is actually like 10-20 different kinds of people - some know SQL, others can't put 2+2 together and arrive at anything other than the word "magic". Some think in terms of stories--others think in terms of conversion funnels. OK, so you've put together some data dictionary, did some training, segmented users into 1) technical ones (SQL/LookML/BackML...), 2) business (explore), 3) consumers (dashboards/pretty charts). But now it turns out that much of the data they rely on is generated by a different team--say, operations or sales. Again, you've got 10-20 different kinds of personalities there. Somehow all these people have to agree. How do you make them all agree? Short answer: you cannot. No one can. They don't even like speaking to one another - and now you are going to come in and make them agree on what kind of KPI is going to determine their success => bonus. Hell no!
There are ways to make progress on both fronts. And, no doubt, an open source project has some chance. But it is not easy. And no one has really done it in 30 years. Many have tried.
Full disclosure: I love BigQuery (Google Cloud partner). Love Looker. Rely on Open Source constantly. Just trying to demonstrate a realistic view of how hard this problem is.