March 2023 Summaries

With the rapid growth of cloud data warehouses, a new ecosystem of tools has emerged, including transformation, testing, quality, observability, and vertical-specific reporting tools. This boom necessitates a new generation of business intelligence: headless BI, which decouples data metrics from presentation layers to push metrics definition up the data stack. A standardized definition of headless BI includes four essential components: data modeling, access control, caching, and APIs. Data modeling involves defining metrics in code, ensuring deduplication, and consistency across applications. Access control manages and audits access to data, while caching ensures consistent data freshness and reduces redundant requests. APIs make data accessible to every application, enabling new automations and use cases. A headless BI system is valuable when integrated into any data stack and should be made available to everyone, with community input and values guiding its stewardship.

Today, we are launching the Cube Partner Network, a program for partners who deliver solutions using Cube, a semantic layer for data applications. Our customers are building powerful data experiences with unique, highly customized apps that use their preferred tools and frameworks. As we grow, we want to expand our ecosystem of integrations while providing support to our users on various topics such as data engineering, front-end development, and analytics best practices. However, this process is not scalable, so we're introducing a consulting partner program to provide our customers with access to trusted firms with deep expertise in implementing and optimizing data applications. Through the Cube Partner Network, partners will receive technical training, co-marketing opportunities, sandbox environments, referral opportunities, and more, helping them grow their business while delivering high-quality data services to their clients.

The text discusses the features and benefits of using Cube Store, a purpose-built distributed, fast, and reliable data store, as part of Cube deployments. It highlights the importance of in-memory cache and query queue management in ensuring low latency and scalability for identical queries. The article explains how these features work together to provide excellent support for embedded analytics and real-time analytics use cases. Additionally, it covers the reasons why Cube decided to move away from using Redis as a data store for its in-memory cache and query queue, including operations and reliability considerations, client stability and code complexity considerations, and the presence of Cube Store in many deployments. The article provides a migration guide for users who still have Redis as part of their Cube deployment, outlining the steps needed to upgrade to Cube Store.

We've made a major update to Cube Cloud pricing, introducing transparent and predictable consumption-based billing based on Cube Compute Units (CCUs), which accurately reflect the compute required for running certain components. This change aims to provide more accurate forecasting of usage costs, making it easier for users to plan their expenses. The updated pricing now features four new plans: Starter, Premium, Enterprise, and Enterprise Premier, each tailored to meet the needs of different Cube Cloud users. These plans offer varying levels of scalability, uptime guarantees, and support options, including dedicated customer support managers. Existing Standard and Enterprise plan users will not be affected by this change, but are encouraged to explore the new plans and upgrade when ready.

The latest release of Cube Core, version 0.32, introduces the GraphQL API to general availability, bringing a significant improvement to the platform's functionality and user experience. The release also includes quality-of-life improvements to Cube SQL, such as enhanced support for various SQL functions and features like CASE statements, LEFT and RIGHT functions, and CAST expressions. Additionally, Cube Store has become the default cache and queue engine, replacing Redis, and performance boosts have been achieved in both Cube Store and Cube SQL. However, some breaking changes and deprecations have also been introduced, including support for Node.js v12 and v15 being dropped due to reaching end-of-life, and using certain packages requiring absolute imports. Users are strongly recommended to upgrade to the latest version of Node.js, specifically v16, and to use Docker-based deployments or Cube Cloud instead of Serverless Framework deployments.