Soda

Soda Simplifies Analytics Engineering Workflow with Incident Management for dbt

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Brussels, Belgium
January 20, 2022

Soda, the provider of data reliability tools and observability platform, today announced an incident management workflow integration with dbt, the data transformation tool maintained by dbt Labs. The integration significantly enhances efficiency and teamwork for analytics engineers with incident management workflow on tests that have been developed and automated in dbt.

dbt is a development environment that speaks the preferred language of data analysts: SQL. Analytics engineers use dbt to transform raw data as a development framework that combines modular SQL with software engineering best practises to make data transformation reliable, fast, and fun.

In the modern data architecture, data management is computationally tied into every step of the data flow and product lifecycle and, given the cross-functional nature of data, teams are dependent on each other to provide reliable high-quality data, every day. dbt helps to build robust data pipelines and enforces the execution of data tests at the point transformations are coded; it gets the data flowing. Integrating the transformative power of dbt with the observability and incident management workflow capabilities offered by Soda enables a comprehensive, end-to-end workflow to detect and resolve issues.

“The beauty of the modern data stack is that it’s extensible and flexible enough that you can use the tools that are best suited for the job at hand,” said Cor Zurmond, a Data Engineer at GoDataDriven. “Data observability is a key part of the modern data stack, so I’m excited to see Soda integrating with popular data tools like dbt so that data users can use their preferred tools without having to compromise on data quality issues. Being able to mix and match between dbt’s ‘strict’ tests, that block the continuation of your data transformations and Soda’s ‘soft’ tests, that detect data issues which creep into your data models, will make for an excellent development experience for data engineers like myself, and further improve the trust in the data for all consumers.”

Soda’s integration with dbt delivers the following capabilities for data teams:

  • Manage incidents over time: incident management workflow can be carried out on dbt test results that are stored over time in Soda Cloud Metrics Store.
  • Alert the right people using the tools they use: an integration between Soda Cloud and Slack means that data teams are the first to know when data issues arise and problems can be fixed before they have a downstream impact.
  • Collaboratively resolve data reliability and quality incidents: because dbt tests are displayed in Soda Cloud, analytics engineers have the workflow capabilities to set up alerts or create incidents for data issues meaning that the right stakeholders can be brought in to resolve issues collaboratively as a team.

“dbt is widely considered to be the number one tool for analytical data transformation,” explained Maarten Masschelein, CEO and Co-founder, Soda. “Soda’s data reliability tools and observability platform simplifies data quality processes, so by integrating with dbt we are introducing streamlined issue resolution processes to help analytics engineers to spend less time worrying about data quality issues and more time working on data transformation. We’re proud to have been able to meet the needs of data teams by bringing dbt to Soda Cloud, making it possible to get ahead of issues and maximize data availability.”

Full information on how to get started with the integration available on the Soda blog here.


About Soda

Soda is the data reliability company that provides Open Source (OSS) and SaaS tools that enable data teams to discover, prioritize, and resolve data issues. Soda’s mission is to bring everyone closer to the data, resulting in data products and analytics that everyone can trust.  The Soda global data community already counts Disney, HelloFresh, and Udemy as major contributors to have deployed Soda’s data reliability tools. Soda is one of the 2021 Gartner® Cool Vendors™ in Data Management [1], recognition and validation for our approach to solving the number one data management challenge faced by modern organizations: ensuring high quality, trusted data is available to enable confident decision making, serve and delight customers, and improve processes. For more information, visit soda.io.

  1. Gartner “Cool Vendors in Data Management,” Philip Russom, Ehtisham Zaidi, Jason Medd, Eric Thoo, Robert Thanaraj, 1 June 2021 - ID G00746797

    Soda is Named One of the 2021 Gartner Cool Vendors in Data Management