What is the difference between this and Plotly Dash? Or Streamlit?
Launch HN: Evidence (YC S21) – Web framework for data analysts
81–90 of 94 posts
Re: Launch HN: Evidence (YC S21) – Web framework for data analysts
#82What is the difference between this and Plotly Dash? Or Streamlit?
Both great tools!
Evidence is aimed at teams who would prefer to build their analytics infrastructure primarily with SQL, rather than python.
Evidence also includes nice features for building multi-page information architectures (paramaterized pages, nested routes etc.), while I understand dash and streamlit are more aimed at standalone dashboard/ interactive products.
Re: Launch HN: Evidence (YC S21) – Web framework for data analysts
#83Earlier quoted context omitted.
You have cut straight to the heart of a pretty interesting problem that we are still thinking through. You are exactly right, right now this is pure front-end. That's intentional, and there's a lot that we like about that approach, especially in light of the success of dbt. We think dbt fundamentally changes what is needed from a BI tool and that vendors who are maintaining really heavy built-in data transformation l…
>I think it would be very lightweight Very interesting, that sounds great. I like the idea of keeping minimal business logic in the BI tool, but it is necessary. And yes, lots of metric layer startups, taking advantage of that does make sense. Will take a closer look, thanks!
We are one of the startups working on the metrics layer 'Transform': https://transform.co/
The founding team behind Transform worked on the early implementation of Airbnb's metric store (now popularly known as Minerva!).
You can also check out this podcast on Data Engineering that dives into the Metrics layer: https://www.dataengineeringpodcast.com/transform-co-metrics-...
Re: Launch HN: Evidence (YC S21) – Web framework for data analysts
#84How do you handle live data vs fixed data? If I am making a report, I want the charts to remain static - if not, over time, they may not match with what is said on the report. Is there an option to, after saving the report or run the query, to make the values static forever?
This is an excellent question, and it's one of the areas where we think we can do some pretty novel things with our approach. There are a two main cases of this idea that we have spent time thinking about. 1. Truly static report. Here, you would need to condition your SQL queries so that they continue to return the same results over time. E.g. your `where` clause restricts the results to 'on or before' the day of wri…
> In a future state, we've talked about rendering a snapshot of the report and checking that into version control, so that even if your underlying data is a moving target, you can hold onto what the report looked like at a moment in time.
> We're kind of mixed on that idea of snapshotting reports themselves though,
Right. In terms of a code-oriented version control service like GitHub, you shouldn't be checking in the rendered reports unless you want people modifying them directly (and they will) and submitting PRs.
Instead, consider attaching the generated report artifacts as releases* associated with a tag (or possibly a branch) in the version-controlled source, and you get a few helpful conventions and affordances.
OTOH, you are then sort of constrained to reviewing a release (or release candidate) with the built-in functionality only in the unrendered-but-version-controlled source, which probably isn't what you want.
Re: Launch HN: Evidence (YC S21) – Web framework for data analysts
#85Earlier quoted context omitted.
>I think it would be very lightweight Very interesting, that sounds great. I like the idea of keeping minimal business logic in the BI tool, but it is necessary. And yes, lots of metric layer startups, taking advantage of that does make sense. Will take a closer look, thanks!
We are one of the startups working on the metrics layer 'Transform': https://transform.co/ The founding team behind Transform worked on the early implementation of Airbnb's metric store (now popularly known as Minerva!). You can also check out this podcast on Data Engineering that dives into the Metrics layer: https://www.dataengineeringpodcast.com/transform-co-metrics-...
Great, will have a look, I've been meaning to do so.
Re: Launch HN: Evidence (YC S21) – Web framework for data analysts
#86Earlier quoted context omitted.
I believe that we’re working on a similar product that you described. Our metrics layer, metriql, extends dbt for metrics definitions and provides an open-source CLI that serves your metrics to the data tools. We have REST API and use Trino protocol so in case you support Trino (formerly Presto) you already support metriql. :) Here is the link: https://metriql.com
Thanks for posting! Is metriql entirely open source, or just the CLI? How do you plan to make revenue?
We use BSL license and metriql is free with a single database target. If you want to connect multiple dbt projects in a single deployment, you need to go through the sales cycle.
We work with ETL vendors that use metriql to make revenue with our BI tool integrations so we picked BSL license to be able to structure our business model in a way that you should be required to pay only if you're reselling metriql to your customers. We have plans to build a managed Cloud version as well.
You can find the license here: https://github.com/metriql/metriql
Re: Launch HN: Evidence (YC S21) – Web framework for data analysts
#87Hello, the idea is very cool. The website looks squished on mobile
Re: Launch HN: Evidence (YC S21) – Web framework for data analysts
#88> Most BI tools use a no-code drag-and-drop interface
I am learning Tableau but I have experience with PyGal (SVG based python data visualizer) and a little of bokeh. Using enterprise accepted data analytics tools seems like going backwards coming from a developer role.
Re: Launch HN: Evidence (YC S21) – Web framework for data analysts
#89> In our experience, the BI layer is the weakest part of the modern data stack. The BI layer has a poor developer experience, and decision makers don’t really like the outputs they get. It turns out, these two issues are closely related. The drag and drop experience is so slow and low-leverage that the only way to get all the content on the page is to push a lot of cognitive load onto the end user: global filters, dr…
We can just teach all the people that want this data SQL?
Re: Launch HN: Evidence (YC S21) – Web framework for data analysts
#90Have you heard of knitr ( https://yihui.org/knitr/ )? It's the gold standard as far as I'm concerned for dynamic report generation that needs to run code. Since it supports running arbitrary shell commands, it can already be used to query remote databases as long as you have a CLI to query them with. Combined with RMarkdown ( https://rmarkdown.rstudio.com/ ), which augments Markdown with support for LaTeX typesetting…
> I'm not trying to be a downer, but it seems like your product is just duplicating the functionality of these existing products but does less since it only supports SQL and Markdown.
To me, this is a feature. Evidence sounds like it’s completely batteries included. Your example sounds like I have to learn a whole new toolchain.