The Data Stack Show - The PRQL: Reverse ETL and the Distinction Between Operation vs Analysis on Data

Episode Date: March 4, 2022

Eric and Kostas preview their upcoming conversation with Borris Jabes of Census.

Welcome to the Dazisac Show prequel. This is where we give you a little sneak peek of the show that we just recorded. So we just got off of an episode with Boris, who founded a company called Sensus. I guess from a marketing perspective, they're in the reverse ETL space. But Costas, one of the things that really struck me was that after the conversation with Boris, reverse ETL really felt like an insufficient term to describe, you know, the complexity both of the product and of what they're trying to do inside of organizations. Yeah, 100%. side of organizations yeah 100 i think the part of the conversation that we had with boris where like he made the distinction between operations on the data and analysis on the data i think that's like something super important to keep in our minds and of course like it's one thing to do

analysis on the data it's another thing to start using the results of this analysis on like what doing like you know your thing like as a salesperson or a marketing person every day. The stake around what can happen if something goes wrong there is much, much greater. So it's a completely different problem in the sense that it's a different product. In terms of technology, we might be able to reduce reverse ETL or whatever we want to call this thing into yet another pipeline. But in terms of product experience

and what's the position and what this product does in the organization, it's a completely different story. And that's why we have a different product category out there at the end. does in the organization, it's like a completely different story. And that's why we have like, exist like a different product category out there at the end. And I think he did like an amazing job in describing exactly the reasons that reverse ETL and ETL is like two completely different things. And it's one thing to pull data out of Salesforce and push it into the data warehouse. And it's

yet another thing like to pull the data out of the data warehouse and push it back to Salesforce. I agree. And I think, you know, I would say for any of our listeners out there, this episode probably was one of the more helpful ones that we've done in terms of sort of breaking down the theory behind what we call the modern data stack, you know, even from its origins. Speaking of which, there's also a really tasty Silicon Valley lore story about the origin of the term reverse ETL that involves a public notion document, which I don't know if we could get more,

you know, Silicon Valley terminology in the tech space. So you're definitely going to want to listen to this one, both to learn and to pick up on some good Silicon the tech space. So you're definitely going to want to listen to this one, both to learn and to pick up on some good Silicon Valley tech stories. So check it out. Boris from Census. It's a great episode and we'll catch you in the next one.