Changelog October 2022

*Puts on spooky Whale costume* Happy Halloween from Whaly! 👻🎃 we hope this pumpkin spice latte season has been (trick or) treating you well. We’re back with another newsletter on our latest Product & Marketing updates. Check it out:

The dbt Cloud X Whaly Integration Is Here! 🎉

We’re super excited to announce our brand new integration with dbt Cloud! Our native integration is designed to help you bridge the gap between your dbt data project and your BI platform, ensuring that models are always fresh and updated in Whaly. Analysts will be empowered to:

• Work more efficiently across both tools
• Iterate faster
• Communicate to their business users when the upstream pipeline has issues
• Develop stronger bonds between business and data teams, boosting trust and adoption of data

Read our blog article for more info on the integration, and why we think it’s a game-changer.

⚡️ Performance Improvements

We know how important speed is to making the right, data-backed business decisions.

• We’ve worked on the internal Whaly query engine to boost query time. For some requests, we’ve seen a 4x improvement in load time.
• We also released a Console tool to monitor performance and enhance dashboard debugging.
• For more info on Performance, check out our new Performance page on our website!

🧭 Exploration Ownership

We’re constantly working to maximize our self-service capabilities to boost adoption. Now, our Exploration layer allows you to:

• Showcase your Explorations
• Describe what’s in them and how to use them
• Clearly display the ownership point of contact, in case there are any questions

🔒 SSO for Stronger Security

Strengthen your company’s security measures and user provisioning by leveraging our new SSO (Single Sign-On) capabilities. This way, you’ll have clear control over who has access to Whaly. We’re integrated with 30+ identity providers (refer to workos.com).

🌀 Modeling Improvements

• Flow improvements with new functions
• SQL editor improvement with autocomplete

🔗 Connectors

• Postgres improvement
• MariaDB release

💡 Marketing Resources

• Metabase vs. Whaly - Whaly is an alternative to Metabase. After great feedback on our Looker comparison, we thought we’d do one for Metabase as well. Check it out if you’re evaluating BI tools.
• Connector Catalog - our Essential ETL Catalog got a major upgrade! By popular demand, we have a better way to answer your questions around where to find your connectors. Simply head to connectorcatalog.com - there's never been an easier way to search.
• Spotlight on Data Analytics Leadership with Lucas Smith - An interview with Lucas Smith, Senior Data Analytics Manager at Hudl, a global sports-tech company. We talked about a range of data topics, from team management and structure, KPIs, dashboards, and his advice for those getting started in analytics.
• 5 Best Practices for Data Governance - Data Governance covers a wide range of topics, making it hard to know where to start when implementing governance at your company. Read our top actionable advice for ensuring strong data governance.
• A Product Manager’s View on "Data Products" - In the data mesh concept, one of the main principles is to treat data as a product. As a former Product Manager, our CTO draws from his experiences to share his tips for effective ways to deliver a “data product” so that it’s widely adopted and useful to data consumers.
• What does self-service mean in BI? - A detailed explanation of what self-service means in BI, what it should achieve, and how. Should it be like self-service gas pumping at a gas station, or express check-out at a grocery store?
• The dbt Cloud x Whaly Integration Is Here - just in case you missed it above.

If you have any topics that you'd like to see covered, please feel free to reach out! We're always open to new ideas that you would find valuable: anna@whaly.io