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Blazer: Business intelligence made simple

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Re: Blazer: Business intelligence made simple

#11

Post by jollyllama »

mritchie712 wrote: post #7
jollyllama wrote: post #4

Why no REST API data source?

Like to query data from SaaS apps? e.g. Hubspot? The rate limits on most API's like that normally prevent analytical queries. e.g. if you wanted to query all your open deals in Hubspot, it could take several minutes to run the API requests to get the data. This is normally solved with ETL into a database instead.

Sure, or any internal service/microservice.

The ETL approach makes sense but in the case of a service/microservice but I'm assuming you've got to have a well defined dataflow.

Edit: also at that point, any change (schema change, etc.) to the underlying data store represents a change to your dashboard, rather than a change to an API.

Re: Blazer: Business intelligence made simple

#12

Post by MatthiasPortzel »

voberoi wrote: post #2

It's open-source Heroku Dataclips (one of my favorite products ever)! I haven't used Blazer, but I have followed and love the idea behind this project. If folks have used it here, I'd love to hear from them.

I use Blazer every day, just as a convenient way to run SQL against a read-only instance of our production database.

We also use Tableu for more sophisticated reports for non-technical users, but since blazer is just a Ruby gem, there’s almost no reason not to have it set up in a rails app.

Re: Blazer: Business intelligence made simple

#13

Post by apercu »

mritchie712 wrote: post #6
voberoi wrote: post #2

It's open-source Heroku Dataclips (one of my favorite products ever)! I haven't used Blazer, but I have followed and love the idea behind this project. If folks have used it here, I'd love to hear from them.

I've used it before, it's great to start, but here's what happened to me: 1. Connected it to my production postgres (which was fine when I didn't have many users) 2. Spun up a replica postgres on GCP to connect it to instead 3. I wanted Stripe and CRM data in the reports, but I can't sync those to the replica and I didn't want to load them to prod 4. Signed up for Snowflake ($$$) and set up Fivetran ($$$) to sync all…

Nice, clear, concise demo.

Re: Blazer: Business intelligence made simple

#14

Post by mritchie712 »

inhumantsar wrote: post #8
mritchie712 wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've used it before, it's great to start, but here's what happened to me: 1. Connected it to my production postgres (which was fine when I didn't have many users) 2. Spun up a replica postgres on GCP to connect it to instead 3. I wanted Stripe and CRM data in the reports, but I can't sync those to the replica and I didn't want to load them to prod 4. Signed up for Snowflake ($$$) and set up Fivetran ($$$) to sync all…

> Set up Metabase instead but... I've been trying to retire metabase but our non technical people love it too much. everyone from marketing to finance has dashboards and alerts and reports.

Did they create the dashboards though? The problem I had is every time they wanted some small change, they needed to bother someone that knew SQL and they couldn't create one from scratch.

What were you looking to replace it with?

Re: Blazer: Business intelligence made simple

#16

Post by nlh »

This looks super cool. One thing that stands out as missing (or I am missing it) -- does anyone know if there's a way to drill into the data and see the raw tabular data behind a given chart? That's one feature Metabase has that I find essential -- if a number in a chart looks off (or you're just curious) you can drill into the row-level tabular data and figure out what's going on.

Re: Blazer: Business intelligence made simple

#17

Post by jaxn »

3dsnano wrote: post #5

blazer rules, been using it since day one of our startup. it's great for situations where someone on the team needs a graph or CSV download of what's in the database. saves so much time and effort compared to writing code to do the same work. we have written over 100 different queries and dashboards in blazer and use it daily. ankane is a true wizard; dude has written so many other fabulous tools like searchkick & ch…

That guy maintains a shocking number of projects. Pghero, Ahoy, a ton of useful Ruby data / ml libraries.

Re: Blazer: Business intelligence made simple

#18

Post by voberoi »

mritchie712 wrote: post #6
voberoi wrote: post #2

It's open-source Heroku Dataclips (one of my favorite products ever)! I haven't used Blazer, but I have followed and love the idea behind this project. If folks have used it here, I'd love to hear from them.

I've used it before, it's great to start, but here's what happened to me: 1. Connected it to my production postgres (which was fine when I didn't have many users) 2. Spun up a replica postgres on GCP to connect it to instead 3. I wanted Stripe and CRM data in the reports, but I can't sync those to the replica and I didn't want to load them to prod 4. Signed up for Snowflake ($$$) and set up Fivetran ($$$) to sync all…

I know the market you are targeting with your product plug and the problems you point out are real challenges that businesses have.

But the lack of all of these features is what I absolutely love about Heroku Dataclips and products inspired by it. It does "run SQL on my DB and give me a shareable chart" more easily and effectively than any BI tool I've ever used.

It's such an incredible mini-product that made Heroku Postgres a joy to use (when I used to use Heroku), and what makes me excited about something like Blazer.

Re: Blazer: Business intelligence made simple

#19

Post by fakedang »

jaxn wrote: post #17
3dsnano wrote: post #5

blazer rules, been using it since day one of our startup. it's great for situations where someone on the team needs a graph or CSV download of what's in the database. saves so much time and effort compared to writing code to do the same work. we have written over 100 different queries and dashboards in blazer and use it daily. ankane is a true wizard; dude has written so many other fabulous tools like searchkick & ch…

That guy maintains a shocking number of projects. Pghero, Ahoy, a ton of useful Ruby data / ml libraries.

Pg vector too! Andrew Kane is a beast.

Re: Blazer: Business intelligence made simple

#20

Post by kak3a »

mritchie712 wrote: post #6
voberoi wrote: post #2

It's open-source Heroku Dataclips (one of my favorite products ever)! I haven't used Blazer, but I have followed and love the idea behind this project. If folks have used it here, I'd love to hear from them.

I've used it before, it's great to start, but here's what happened to me: 1. Connected it to my production postgres (which was fine when I didn't have many users) 2. Spun up a replica postgres on GCP to connect it to instead 3. I wanted Stripe and CRM data in the reports, but I can't sync those to the replica and I didn't want to load them to prod 4. Signed up for Snowflake ($$$) and set up Fivetran ($$$) to sync all…

How are those 500+ data source connectors are implemented? Do you use 3rd party APIs? Im always curious about that.
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