April 2022 Summaries

Building an analytics application with a robust data analytics dashboard using Next.js, Cube, and Bizcharts is possible. The tutorial starts by creating a new Cube deployment in Cube Cloud, selecting a database, and setting up the necessary credentials to connect to the public database for testing purposes. It then proceeds to visualize data using the Developer Playground, where users can generate dashboards from various templates for different front-end frameworks and data visualization libraries. Next.js is used to build an analytics dashboard by creating a new application, adding required packages, and setting up environment variables with the Cube API endpoint and token. The code initializes the Cube.js API client and uses it to fetch data on the server-side using the `getServerSideProps` function, which allows for faster loading times, especially in slow network conditions.

The collaboration between Isha Terdal from Cube, Andrey Pechkurov from QuestDB, and Yitaek Hwang showcases how QuestDB and Cube synergize to create a robust time series data pipeline. QuestDB is an open-source database designed for efficient storage and querying of large volumes of time-stamped data, while Cube is a headless business intelligence platform that organizes data into structured models, enabling consistent metric definitions across applications. Together, they offer a powerful solution for real-time analytics, allowing users to pre-aggregate data and leverage various APIs for seamless integration with different data applications. The blog illustrates the process through an example of building a crypto price analysis platform, demonstrating how QuestDB's fast processing and Cube's data modeling streamline complex data workflows, making them accessible and efficient for diverse use cases such as business intelligence and machine learning.

Cube's open source data modeling language is used to describe measures, dimensions, and relationships in a data source, generating SQL queries against data sources when responding to requests made to the REST, GraphQL, and SQL APIs. The language is decoupled from specific interfaces, visualization, or user experience, allowing consistent definitions across applications. It's based on JavaScript and enables dynamic data definitions, caching, and access control rules through a virtual machine. A data modeling example shows how to represent tables in Cube's modeling language, defining measures, dimensions, and relationships with properties like `sql`, `joins`, and `measures`. The language can be queried using APIs or explored within BI tools, providing a foundation for accessible and consistent data across downstream applications.

This tutorial guides developers in building a custom dashboard with React, using Nivo for data visualization and Cube Cloud as the backend database. The dashboard displays data from a PostgreSQL database, allowing users to easily build charts and other dataviz elements. With server-side rendering capabilities and full control over how data is displayed, nivo stands out from other libraries like Chart.js or Recharts. Cube Cloud provides a headless business intelligence engine that exposes the data through multiple APIs, making it easy to integrate with React applications. The tutorial covers connecting Cube Cloud to a PostgreSQL database, building a bar chart using Nivo and Cube's Developer Playground, and integrating the chart into a React application. By following this tutorial, developers can enhance their user experience by adding interactive charts and visualizations without spending developer time to build them from scratch.

The tutorial discusses the importance of building robust data visualizations using Apache Superset with a semantic layer provided by Cube, an open-source headless BI platform. It highlights how Cube can help prevent dashboards from breaking due to upstream changes in the data source, such as column renames or removals, table alterations, or changes in the data source itself. The tutorial showcases how Cube's development mode allows for easy updates to the data model, which can be deployed to a production environment without affecting Superset dashboards. It also introduces Cube's alerts feature, which provides email notifications when an alert is triggered due to issues such as pre-aggregation build failures or database unavailability. By using Cube with Superset, users can build robust and maintainable data visualizations that minimize the risk of breaking dashboards due to upstream changes.

The next workshop in our series will be on Building Data Applications with Cube, scheduled for May 18th, 2022. The event has already seen a large turnout and received positive feedback from first-time attendees. The workshop covered various topics including pre-aggregations use-cases, non-additive vs. additive measures, optimizing pre-aggregations with an export bucket, refresh tuning, rollup-joins, and multi-tenancy best practices. A recording of the workshop is available on YouTube and the slides are available for download. The open-source version of Cube features all discussed topics, while demos were conducted on Cube Cloud. Registration for the next workshop is now open with optional survey questions to help shape the agenda.

visx is an open-source visualization library for React that provides expressive, low-level primitives built on top of D3.js. It allows developers to create unique and interesting visualizations by combining basic elements such as pie, text, group, and more. visx was built by Airbnb to combine the power of D3 with React, unifying their visualization stack. It's a popular tool that outshines competitors like Recharts, offering advantages such as modularity, non-opinionated use, TypeScript support, good documentation, mock data, and simple styling. However, it may take time to grasp its architecture and learn how to combine pieces for unique visualizations. visx can be used with Cube Cloud, a headless BI tool that provides a REST API and connects to databases, allowing developers to create dashboards like the one in this tutorial. The tutorial demonstrates how to set up Cube Cloud, create a new React application, install necessary packages, and build a pie chart visualization using visx to display total orders from 2019-01-01 to 2020-01-01.

Cube Cloud has introduced configurable email alerts to enhance diagnostics and error resolution in data pipelines, making it easier to triage issues quickly and minimize the impact on users. The new feature includes four types of alerts for API failures, response timeouts, pre-aggregation build failures, and error resolutions, providing timely notifications with detailed information about the errors and a link to troubleshoot the issue. With this addition, Cube Cloud aims to simplify the process of identifying and resolving issues in data pipelines, allowing users to focus on their work without interruptions.