About this episode
Aug 2
Why Multi-Agent Systems Need Shared State, Graph Semantics, and Governance
Summary In this episode Ragnor Comerford talks about OmniGraph, a lakehouse-native graph storage layer designed around the needs of agentic systems. He explores how graphs are primarily a semantic model for representing the world, rather than just a specialized engine for travers ... Show More
1h 2m
Jul 6
Building the Context Flywheel for AI Data Agents
Summary In this episode Prukalpa Sankar, co-founder of Atlan, talks about what it takes to build a “context flywheel” for AI agents in data-intensive organizations. She explained why model intelligence alone isn’t enough to make AI useful in production, and how real performance d ... Show More
1 h
Jun 18
Holding Kafka Right: Product-Friendly Streaming with TypeStream
Summary In this episode Jevin Maltais talks about the practical realities of building reliable, product-focused streaming systems with Kafka. Jevin shares lessons from roles at Zapier, Humi, and Clio, where real-time synchronization, customer data unification, and document sync a ... Show More
49m 51s
Aug 2024
Snowflake's Baris Gultekin on Unlocking the Value of Data With Large Language Models - Ep. 231
Snowflake is using AI to help enterprises transform data into insights and applications. In this episode of NVIDIA’s AI Podcast, host Noah Kravitz and Baris Gultekin, head of AI at Snowflake, discuss how the company’s AI Data Cloud platform enables customers to access and manage ... Show More
32m 10s
Jan 2024
Fivetran COO Unravels Enterprise Data Movement
Automating the collection of dispersed, divergent and disjointed pools of enterprise data on to a single repository to drive analytics and build applications remains complex. In this edition of Bloomberg Intelligence’s Tech Disruptors podcast, Fivetran cofounder and COO Taylor Br ... Show More
40m 15s
Jan 2024
SingleStore CEO on High-Speed Database Currents
Enterprise data architecture is highly complex, databases deeply fragmented and demand for high-speed information flows continues to grow. In this edition of the Tech Disruptors podcast, SingleStore CEO Raj Verma joins Sunil Rajgopal, Bloomberg Intelligence senior software analys ... Show More
47m 26s
Feb 2025
How Can GenAI Make Analytics More Accessible to Product Teams? (with Mario Ciabarra)
<p>Whether you prefer the term data-driven, or data-informed, or data-dazzled, it doesn't matter—today's tech cannot survive without high quality data sets AND the tools to use them effectively. But we also can't afford to think about data as the responsibility of ... Show More
27m 46s
May 2022
How to Link Data to Business Outcomes
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Every business likes to claim that it is "data-driven" or at least "data-informed," but too often, that's not the way things actually work. Data is relegated to an IT function, siloed and, in some cases, boils down to simply producing more repor ... Show More
17m 32s
Nov 2023
#153 Ed Anuff: Unpacking AI's Role in Data Management
<p>This episode is sponsored by Celonis ,the global leader in process mining. AI has landed and enterprises are adapting. To give customers slick experiences and teams the technology to deliver. The road is long, but you're closer than you think. Your business processes run throu ... Show More
59m 5s
Oct 2023
#628: Data on EKS
Organizations use their data to make better decisions and build innovative experiences for their customers. With the exponential growth in data, and the rapid pace of innovation in machine learning (ML), there is a growing need to build modern data applications that are agile and ... Show More
20m 56s
Nov 2022
How can You Become a Data Hero -- Aron Clymer //Data Clymer
<p>Aron Clymer, Founder and CEO of Data Clymer, talks about data and analytics. Nowadays, companies are running their entire firm on 20 to sometimes even 100 different SaaS applications. If these companies truly want to understand their customers and everything they’re doing, the ... Show More
17m 5s
Summary
Maintaining a single source of truth for your data is the biggest challenge in data engineering. Different roles and tasks in the business need their own ways to access and analyze the data in the organization. In order to enable this use case, while maintaining a single point of access, the semantic layer has evolved as a technological solution to the problem. In this episode Artyom Keydunov, creator of Cube, discusses the evolution and applications of the semantic layer as a component of your data platform, and how Cube provides speed and cost optimization for your data consumers.
Announcements
- Hello and welcome to the Data Engineering Podcast, the show about modern data management
- This episode is brought to you by Datafold – a testing automation platform for data engineers that prevents data quality issues from entering every part of your data workflow, from migration to dbt deployment. Datafold has recently launched data replication testing, providing ongoing validation for source-to-target replication. Leverage Datafold's fast cross-database data diffing and Monitoring to test your replication pipelines automatically and continuously. Validate consistency between source and target at any scale, and receive alerts about any discrepancies. Learn more about Datafold by visiting dataengineeringpodcast.com/datafold.
- Dagster offers a new approach to building and running data platforms and data pipelines. It is an open-source, cloud-native orchestrator for the whole development lifecycle, with integrated lineage and observability, a declarative programming model, and best-in-class testability. Your team can get up and running in minutes thanks to Dagster Cloud, an enterprise-class hosted solution that offers serverless and hybrid deployments, enhanced security, and on-demand ephemeral test deployments. Go to dataengineeringpodcast.com/dagster today to get started. Your first 30 days are free!
- Data lakes are notoriously complex. For data engineers who battle to build and scale high quality data workflows on the data lake, Starburst powers petabyte-scale SQL analytics fast, at a fraction of the cost of traditional methods, so that you can meet all your data needs ranging from AI to data applications to complete analytics. Trusted by teams of all sizes, including Comcast and Doordash, Starburst is a data lake analytics platform that delivers the adaptability and flexibility a lakehouse ecosystem promises. And Starburst does all of this on an open architecture with first-class support for Apache Iceberg, Delta Lake and Hudi, so you always maintain ownership of your data. Want to see Starburst in action? Go to dataengineeringpodcast.com/starburst and get $500 in credits to try Starburst Galaxy today, the easiest and fastest way to get started using Trino.
- Your host is Tobias Macey and today I'm interviewing Artyom Keydunov about the role of the semantic layer in your data platform
Interview
- Introduction
- How did you get involved in the area of data management?
- Can you start by outlining the technical elements of what it means to have a "semantic layer"?
- In the past couple of years there was a rapid hype cycle around the "metrics layer" and "headless BI", which has largely faded. Can you give your assessment of the current state of the industry around the adoption/implementation of these concepts?
- What are the benefits of having a discrete service that offers the business metrics/semantic mappings as opposed to implementing those concepts as part of a more general system? (e.g. dbt, BI, warehouse marts, etc.)
- At what point does it become necessary/beneficial for a team to adopt such a service?
- What are the challenges involved in retrofitting a semantic layer into a production data system?
- evolution of requirements/usage patterns
- technical complexities/performance and cost optimization
- What are the most interesting, innovative, or unexpected ways that you have seen Cube used?
- What are the most interesting, unexpected, or challenging lessons that you have learned while working on Cube?
- When is Cube/a semantic layer the wrong choice?
- What do you have planned for the future of Cube?
Contact Info
Parting Question
- From your perspective, what is the biggest gap in the tooling or technology for data management today?
Closing Announcements
- Thank you for listening! Don't forget to check out our other shows. Podcast.__init__ covers the Python language, its community, and the innovative ways it is being used. The Machine Learning Podcast helps you go from idea to production with machine learning.
- Visit the site to subscribe to the show, sign up for the mailing list, and read the show notes.
- If you've learned something or tried out a project from the show then tell us about it! Email hosts@dataengineeringpodcast.com) with your story.
Links
The intro and outro music is from The Hug by The Freak Fandango Orchestra / CC BY-SA
Sponsored By:
- Starburst: 
This episode is brought to you by Starburst - a data lake analytics platform for data engineers who are battling to build and scale high quality data pipelines on the data lake. Powered by Trino, Starburst runs petabyte-scale SQL analytics fast at a fraction of the cost of traditional methods, helping you meet all your data needs ranging from AI/ML workloads to data applications to complete analytics.
Trusted by the teams at Comcast and Doordash, Starburst delivers the adaptability and flexibility a lakehouse ecosystem promises, while providing a single point of access for your data and all your data governance allowing you to discover, transform, govern, and secure all in one place. Starburst does all of this on an open architecture with first-class support for Apache Iceberg, Delta Lake and Hudi, so you always maintain ownership of your data. Want to see Starburst in action? Try Starburst Galaxy today, the easiest and fastest way to get started using Trino, and get $500 of credits free. [dataengineeringpodcast.com/starburst](https://www.dataengineeringpodcast.com/starburst)
- Datafold: 
This episode is brought to you by Datafold – a testing automation platform for data engineers that prevents data quality issues from entering every part of your data workflow, from migration to dbt deployment. Datafold has recently launched data replication testing, providing ongoing validation for source-to-target replication. Leverage Datafold's fast cross-database data diffing and Monitoring to test your replication pipelines automatically and continuously. Validate consistency between source and target at any scale, and receive alerts about any discrepancies. Learn more about Datafold by visiting https://get.datafold.com/replication-de-podcast.
- Dagster: 
Data teams are tasked with helping organizations deliver on the premise of data, and with ML and AI maturing rapidly, expectations have never been this high. However data engineers are challenged by both technical complexity and organizational complexity, with heterogeneous technologies to adopt, multiple data disciplines converging, legacy systems to support, and costs to manage.
Dagster is an open-source orchestration solution that helps data teams reign in this complexity and build data platforms that provide unparalleled observability, and testability, all while fostering collaboration across the enterprise. With enterprise-grade hosting on Dagster Cloud, you gain even more capabilities, adding cost management, security, and CI support to further boost your teams' productivity. Go to [dagster.io](https://dagster.io/lp/dagster-cloud-trial?source=data-eng-podcast) today to get your first 30 days free!
Support Data Engineering Podcast