The Data Stack Show - The PRQL: Is Reverse ETL New or Old?

Episode Date: March 18, 2022

Eric and Kostas preview their upcoming panel discussion on reverse ETL and the modern data stack.

Welcome to the Data Stack Show prequel. We just recorded a live stream episode. These are quickly becoming one of my favorite types of episodes to do. We've only done one before this one, and we talked about the modern data stack. And we just had the chance to pick some of those brilliant minds in the industry by leaders who are building reverse ETL products. And it was really, really fascinating. A super, super interesting discussion, both about the technology from a technical standpoint and then how it's changing the organization. Costas, I want to ask you this because we got their take on it and we didn't get a chance to get your opinion.

But there was a little bit of a discussion around whether reverse ETL is new or old, right? And I'll go ahead and say it, to some extent, that's a marketing thing, right? Because people like me come up with terms like reverse ETL to try to encapsulate the technology, but is it new or old? I mean, yeah, it is a new category. Your face when I ask an unfair question is mainly the reason I do this show. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, it's hard to answer this like with a yes or no. I mean, yeah, it is new, right?

Like it's a new category of products that exist out there that they work like in a very specific context and with, and they operate with a very like specific technologies and they require like some very specific assumptions, right? Like you need to have a data warehouse, for example, like it's quite important. Like one of the things that we discussed with the guys there is what's kind, like how important the enabler, the cloud data warehouse is, right? And exactly because we got this kind of technologies, we are able today to start

building like these reverse ETL products and all those things. So yeah, we always had to figure out ways to move data from the place where we analyze the data to the places where we can act upon this data, right? We did it with CSV files. We did it with CSV files. We did it with Excel files. We did it with, I don't know, with sending telegrams, whatever. But yeah, we did it. We still do it.

There are better ways to do it. Technology goes always through like cycles and iterations. And now we are at the beginning of another iteration, another cycle. And I think this is very exciting. And we have the right people on this panel to discuss about that. So that's what makes me really excited. Yeah, it's great. It's a great episode.

And I think one thing you'll want to listen for that's really interesting is the different ways that these companies and the leaders of the companies came about solving the problem, which I think is one of the most interesting components. So as you listen to the episode, notice that one of the companies came at it from a marketing use case standpoint, and now they serve use cases across the organization. Another came at it from a sales use case standpoint. And then perhaps most interestingly, one of the companies came at it really from kind of growing out

of a point-to-point integrations use case, which is fascinating. And so to hear about these different approaches and the different ways that they've solved those problems, but also the way that all of those are converging is really interesting. And I think really telling about the future of the technology.

So definitely tune in. Really great episode, really robust discussion, and we will catch you on the next Data Stack Show.