The PRQL: Data Analytics: Same As It Ever Was

Eric Dodds 00:00
Hey welcome to The Data Stack Show prequel. We just recorded a show with Aaron Clymer, he runs a consultancy called Data Clymer. Super interesting. He actually did amazing work going through sort of data driven transformation, I would call it that Salesforce over sauce a decade, which is crazy. He was at Pop Sugar, did amazing things there. And then he wanted to see a wider breadth of problems in the market. And so, he started a consultancy, and he’s doing really interesting things there. Kostas, one thing I loved about this was we actually talked a lot about legacy infrastructure. And delivering sort of data driven results in the context of a legacy infrastructure. Right. So, I’m trying to think of a guest we’ve had on the show who has talked about delivering really significant companywide results with data where they’re running on Oracle on prem. I don’t know if we’ve actually had someone on the show who has talked specifically about that.

Kostas Pardalis 01:14
I think we’ve had an episode about in tweets at some points. They were not right. But they were migrating. Yeah, they were cloud. They were using MSSQL. Like for a very long time.

Eric Dodds 01:28
Oh, that’s right. What was interesting about what Aaron’s to me was, well, let me just say it clearly. And this, I think this actually is, you know, would be for me, like motivation enough to listen to. What he talked about was so similar to what we’ve heard other data leaders talk about, right, I come into a company. Data is all over the place, many teams are not capturing data. And in order to sort of achieve the next level of whatever the company wants to do, you have to ingest all this data, and then make it valuable, and, you know, sort of deliver whatever that looks like, right? You deliver, like feature adoption stuff to product managers, or like executive dashboards or whatever those things are. And so often the show we hear that in the context of like the modern data stack, right, you know, all these modern tools, and all these sorts of things. And he was doing that on, you know, on prem, like pretty legacy stuff. But what really struck me was that he talked about it in the exact same way that everyone else on the show talks about it, right. Which I think was a really good perspective builder. For me in terms of like, yeah, it’s actually the same sort of mechanisms are like internal organization, organizational changes that you need to tackle. It just so happens that it was like, way more annoying for him because on prem is harder, slower, you know, whatever, more cumbersome in many ways. So I don’t know, I really liked that. But what was your take? Do you? Is that a good read?

Kostas Pardalis 03:01
No, I mean, I I agree with you. I don’t think that the organizational and even the problems that they’re trying to solve like they change that much, right? Yeah, we have like better tools and better technologies to do that. But it’s like big people started doing analytics in 2020 Right? They are doing that for many years right and so successful like you have companies out there that they’re still using Oracle and they have done like amazing things on patents a Oracle is a pretty sophisticated products right? Does that I think we we are also like a little bit see a little bit like biased in a way because we come from an environment where we always try to be on the state of the art because we are state of the art let’s say you what building ourselves we are trying to be state of the art and we are trying to challenge what already exists but we should always respect what already exists because that’s something that has proved already of value and words we still have to prove that we can deliver the same and even more valuable than that right so yeah, you have to be like when you try like to change something like you have to be you need like the rights amount of like our grandson’s being a little humble at the same time rights to Yeah, Oracle’s there and I don’t see Oracle going anywhere. So yeah,

Eric Dodds 04:46
I think I think that’s a great way to describe. I think what listeners will love about this episode is that Aaron was so knowledgeable about how to accomplish, like delivering insights from data using a wide variety of tools. You know, I wouldn’t I mean, he certainly didn’t come across as arrogant. He was very just very confident, right, like, here’s how you do this, right. But he just talked about in a way that was very technology agnostic. I mean, he has preferences that like, I think that’s because he came from doing that on like, very different technology than he does it on today. But he has a respect for the fact that it’s the same problem. Yeah. Yep. Which is, actually think about that. When I ride my bike to work every day, I passed this accounting firm, you know, small building and accounting firm and the name of the firm is abacus. And I really appreciate that because there’s kind of this there’s a humbleness there recognizes, like, people have been doing this for 1000s and 1000s of years, right. And the basic principles are, you know, are the same. So yeah, that maybe it’ll make me think about it more next time. I will and I ride my bike home from work today. So all right, well, really good stories from Salesforce Pop Sugar, and lots of interesting things actually, just about what’s happening on the cutting edge of warehousing and BI today from Eric climber, so definitely tune in and many more great episodes coming your way and we’ll catch you on the next one.