dbt is an SQL development environment, developed by Fishtown Analytics, now known as dbt Labs. The vendor states that with dbt, analysts take ownership of the entire analytics engineering workflow, from writing data transformation code to deployment and documentation. dbt Core is distributed under the Apache 2.0 license, and paid Teams and Enterprise editions are available.
$0
per month per seat
IBM StreamSets
Score 8.0 out of 10
N/A
IBM® StreamSets enables users to create and manage smart streaming data pipelines through a graphical interface, facilitating data integration across hybrid and multicloud environments. IBM StreamSets can support millions of data pipelines for analytics, applications and hybrid integration.
The prerequisite is that you have a supported database/data warehouse and have already found a way to ingest your raw data. Then dbt is very well suited to manage your transformation logic if the people using it are familiar with SQL. If you want to benefit from bringing engineering practices to data, dbt is a great fit. It can bring CI/CD practices, version control, automated testing, documentation generation, etc. It is not so well suited if the people managing the transformation logic do not like to code (in SQL) but prefer graphical user interfaces.
IBM StreamSets excels in real-time logistics data ingestion and transformation across hybrid systems. It’s less ideal for lightweight ETL tasks or static datasets where simpler tools can achieve similar results with less overhead and complexity.
IBM Stream sets has been a wonderful addition to our technology stack. It has helped in some of our initiatives such as data engineering, data integration for not only external customers but also for internal purposes. The tool has also helped on our use cases related to streaming data. Moving to another tool would require significant amount of work and time.
dbt is very easy to use. Basically if you can write SQL, you will be able to use dbt to get what you need done. Of course more advanced users with more technical skills can do more things.
The StreamSets platform is very easy to use and the interface is extremely intuitive. The drag-and-drop, low-code design makes it accessible for teams with varying technical skills, allowing us to quickly connect sources, define transformations, and deploy pipelines without heavy coding. StreamSets allows us to get started quickly and not have to worry about our pipelines breaking once they're built.
Streamsets support has improved a lot in the last couple of years. We had some challenges in the beginning with support, but now the quality of the support and the responsiveness to tickets are better. We have contacted support multiple times when it came to scenarios where the system was slow or the output as not as we expected
I actually don't know what the alternative to dbt is. I'm sure one must exist other than more 'roll your own' options like Apache Airflow, say, bu tin terms of super easy managed/cloud data transforms, dbt really does seem to be THE tool to use. It's $50/month per dev, BUT there's a FREE version for 1 dev seat with no read-only access for anyone else, so you can always start with that and then buy yourself a seat later.
First advantage is that this software is particularly new and it keeps updating according to the needs of the user. Other advantage is the it organises and produces conclusions on the basis of data without leaving any relevant information. Other softwares lack in data summarising and readability of the charts and sheets they produce.
